The Sunshine Meadows are a natural garden set at an altitude of approximately 2,300 metres (7,500 feet). It is located within the peaks of the Canadian Rocky Mountains of

Banff National Park Banff National Park is Canada's oldest National Parks of Canada, national park, established in 1885 as Rocky Mountains Park. Located in Alberta's Rockies, Alberta's Rocky Mountains, west of Calgary, Banff encompasses of mountainous terrain, wi ...

. From the vantage point of Sunshine Meadows one has a clear view of

Mount Assiniboine Mount Assiniboine, also known as Assiniboine Mountain, is a pyramidal peak mountain located on the Great Divide, on the British Columbia/Alberta border in Canada. At , it is the highest peak in the Southern Continental Ranges of the Canadian Ro ...

, the highest peak in the region at 3,618 metres (11,870 feet). Sunshine Meadows is located 18 km directly southwest of

Banff, Alberta Banff is a town within Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. It is located in Alberta's Rockies along the Trans-Canada Highway, approximately west of Calgary and east of Lake Louise. At above Banff is the community with the second highest e ...

, and spans along both sides of the

Continental Divide A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not ...

(between

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

and

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

Access

There is no public road access to Sunshine Meadows, and thus it can be reached either by hiking several kilometres from the area of the

Sunshine Village Banff Sunshine Village (formerly Sunshine Village) is a ski resort in western Canada, located on the Continental Divide of the Canadian Rockies within Banff National Park in Alberta and Mt Assiniboine Provincial Park in British Columbia. It is on ...

ski resort, located near the resort town of Banff, or by using the Gondola (Fri-Mon) or Alpine Shuttle Bus (Tues-Thurs) which departs from the Sunshine Village base area. You can book tickets for the shuttle or gondola in advance at http://www.banffsunshinemeadows.com . Guided group hikes with lunch and transportation from Banff is also available. Sunshine Meadows has established a system of well-graded, hardened trails to take the hiker out into the surrounding

sub-alpine Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures lapse rate, fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is ...

and above

tree line The tree line is the edge of the habitat at which trees are capable of growing. It is found at high elevations and high latitudes. Beyond the tree line, trees cannot tolerate the environmental conditions (usually cold temperatures, extreme snowp ...

habitats. Visitors to the meadows are required to stay on these trails to protect the fragile alpine

vegetation Vegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic character ...

The main

hiking trail A trail, also known as a path or track, is an unpaved lane or small road usually passing through a natural area. In the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, a path or footpath is the preferred term for a pedestrian or hiking trail. The ...

travels past Rock Isle Lake, continuing west of the ski area, before finally descending back down to the Sunshine Village Day Lodge. This 5.8 km loop has an elevation gain of 170 metres. Other trails branch off from this main loop to other regions of the meadows.

Scenery

It is the unique mountain scenery which makes Sunshine Meadows a notable habitat. Sunshine Meadows offers a colourful array of wildflowers and other alpine tree line vegetation. The fragile alpine terrain has a growing season of just a few months, as the area is covered by snow October to mid-June. Situated at 2,300 metres, the temperatures drop below freezing in every month of the year. In July and August temperatures can range from 30 degrees

Celsius The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the Kelvin scale. The ...

above zero to freezing.Robert W. Sandford, ''Sunshine: Its Human and Natural Heritage'' (1984), page 56 The field of fragile wildflowers and

lichens A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among hypha, filaments of multiple fungus, fungi species in a mutualism (biology), mutualistic relationship.larches Larches are deciduous conifers in the genus ''Larix'', of the family Pinaceae (subfamily Laricoideae). Growing from tall, they are native to much of the cooler temperate northern hemisphere, on lowlands in the north and high on mountains furth ...

turning yellow and red in the season’s final burst of colour.

External links

Photographs

ClubTread Community Forums

References

{{reflist Banff National Park