Banff National Park is an ideal spot for year-round outdoor recreation and beautiful scenery, and it will surely be worth your while to stop in while you're in Golden. This park covers 6,641 square kilometers (2,564 square miles) of mountains, valleys, glaciers, forests, meadows, lakes, marshes, and rivers, giving any visitor plenty to see and do. In the warmer summer months, you can enjoy fishing and angling, backpacking, biking, camping, boating, horseback riding, scuba diving, swimming, canoeing, mountaineering, and more. Popular winter activities include cross country skiing, ice skating, downhill skiing and snowboarding, ice diving, and snowshoeing.
Visitors to the park can enjoy wildlife viewing and bird watching year round, as the different seasons bring in different species. Banff National Park also offers various interpretive learning programs and events including tours and educational films about the wildlife of Banff. The park also has an onsite museum, the Banff Park Museum National Historic Site of Canada, where you'll see a showcase of information about Banff's mammals, birds, and insects. Banff National Park offers an array of activities and learning experiences, and with so much to do and see, it's no wonder it's named one of the world's top notch destinations!