PlanetSKI is Back in Canada!

by admin in RSS Social News. Posted August 31, 2026

As we arrived in Calgary in Alberta, in the final week of August, the highest ski resorts were seeing their first snow of the approaching winter.

We aren’t here for the snow this time, but it was fabulous to see a sign that the seasons are starting to change.

Sunshine Village near Banff in Alberta has seen its first fall of snow:

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A post shared by Banff Sunshine Village (@sunshinevillage)

The snow has been falling in nearby Kicking Horse in British Columbia too:

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A post shared by Kicking Horse Mountain Resort (@kickinghorsemtn)

We’re here for autumn in the Canadian Rockies – hiking, kayaking, golf, stand-up paddle boarding and much else besides.

We’re driving on part of the the Icefields Pathway road that links the ski resorts of Lake Louise and Jasper.

It’s a road that we have driven many times in the winter, but never in the months outside.

Icefields Parkway, Lake Louise to Jasper. Image Image © PlanetSKI

Icefields Parkway, Lake Louise to Jasper. Image © PlanetSKI

We are driving part of the Icefields Pathway to reach the little-known town of Nordegg.

It is in Clearwater Country in the Brazeau Range, in the foothills of the Rockies.

It is being touted by some as the next Canmore.

That seems a bit of an exaggeration, but we shall see for ourselves shortly.

It is a place where the mountains exist without the gift shops, traffic jams, pricey hotels and over-commercialisation.

“The small town of Nordegg doesn’t offer much beyond fuel, food and an insight into the area’s coal mining history,” said the Lonely Planet guidebook.

“But really what more do you want when the mountains are calling?”

Sounds like PlanetSKI’s kind of place, and we thought we’d get there before the crowds and see what it has to offer.

Plus we’re visiting the Dinosaur Provincial Park to the east of Calgary.

It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and contains the highest concentration of discovered dinosaur bones in the world.

Millions of years ago dinosaurs roamed the area with its sub-topical climate at the edge of a great inland sea.

Now it is a stark landscape of semi-arrid steppes.

We’re also off to Vancouver in British Columbia to visit the city and its Pacific coastline.

Then we’re hitting the road for a week-long road trip deep into the mountains, where we’re staying in a heliski lodge way beyond the ski resort of Whistler.

We started the trip at Calgary’s most famous landmark, The Calgary Tower.