Just Another Mountain

Trail Stats

Distance: 16 KM out-and-back

Elevation: 1045m

Time: 6 hours

When planning our Canadian Rockies trip, I asked a few friends who had previously been to Banff what their favourite hikes were. Cirque Peak was mentioned more than once, being described as having breathtaking views of countless lakes, but also being a pretty tough and scary climb. After hearing this and seeing some pictures, I knew we had to tackle it and witness the incredible scenes with our own eyes.

Just like many trails in Banff National Park, there is a parking lot with toilets and trail information. As per usual, we got there early in the morning so parking was no issue (it was also a pretty wet and cloudy day), but as you can imagine on a better summer’s day it more than likely fills up. You will be following the Helen Lake trail which takes a nice route through the forest, crossing some small streams and remaining sheltered for quite some time, which was lucky for us as it was raining quite a bit. There is a steady elevation gain the whole way up, so it does require relative effort. Once you come out of the trees, there are some rocks to the left where you can go and have a nice look at Bow Lake that’s just across the road. 

The remaining path to Helen Lake is a beautiful, open alpine meadow with wildflowers and marmots scurrying around. I believe the trail is approximately 6km with 500m of elevation gain. It took us an hour and 30 minutes to reach the lake where we stopped for some food. The lake itself is nice, but it’s nothing extraordinary. If you were planning on just hiking to Helen Lake. it would definitely be worth climbing a bit to get a view of the lake from a height.

If you carry on to the right of the lake, you will find some large rocks that you can get to which would be a better place to admire the scenery rather than just sitting at the lake.

And now the fun begins! Helen Lake sits at 2400m which is a significant elevation. Even after some months in South America I still don’t do well at high elevation, and although this isn’t significant in terms of what I did on my backpacking trip, it was higher than I’d been on any hike I have done in Canada. I thankfully found a trusty stick that I used to help me progress up the sandy ridge. The path is easy to follow so you shouldn’t stray from it as the loose scree on either side slips from beneath your feet.

Although I have a fair few hikes under my belt, I had never done any scrambling before. Once we got to the top of this section, we sat for a moment and were already amazed by the view. Looking back down at Helen Lake, we could also see Bow Lake and Bow Valley which was incredible. The rain had passed but there were some clouds that remained, but we still had a great view. When I turned around and looked up at what I was about to climb, I was feeling a little apprehensive. It was so steep and essentially just a pile of small loose rocks with no clear track!

This was definitely the most technical hike I’ve done as I had to constantly think about where I was stepping. I would think I was stepping on a solid rock but once I put my weight on it, it would fall out beneath me causing a domino effect of the smaller rocks around me. I have read other blogs about this trail and experienced scramblers described it as a good one for beginners. I would hate to see what a hard scramble is like! 😅

We could see two people at the top and two others behind us, I really would hate to do this trail on a busy day. We allowed the two behind to pass us out and even though they did so skillfully, several rocks came tumbling down toward us. It took us an hour and 25 minutes to get to the top. We didn’t summit as honestly I was too scared to climb the big boulder especially given the poor weather. We sat at 2950m and I genuinely don’t have a big enough vocabulary to describe the view. We could count almost 20 lakes, we could see so much from this height that it made the scary climb totally worth it. It is one of the best views I have ever witnessed on any hike.

Then of course, we had to somehow make it back down which was even more unnerving than going up! We took our time and I just stayed as low as possible because the thought of slipping and skidding down that hill was taunting me as I went. My clothes, hands and legs were very dusty by the time I got to the end. Once you’re back to the flat rocks above Helen Lake, it’s easy the rest of the way down.

I was so happy we didn’t let the weather stop us from doing this hike, and we were very fortunate to have gotten a great view despite the clouds with very little foot traffic! This was five days into our road trip and having done two long hikes both days previous, I was certainly ready for some chill time so we spent the rest of our day in Banff town. Overall, we hiked about 6 hours, clocked 16km and 1045m of elevation climbed.