Grassi Lakes: the short hike to two turquoise pools above Canmore

Two small lakes that punch above their size

Grassi Lakes is two small pools tucked into a limestone canyon on the edge of Canmore, and it’s become one of the most photographed short hikes in the Bow Valley for a simple reason: the water is a genuine turquoise, the walk to reach it is short, and it doesn’t require the planning that Moraine Lake or Lake Louise now do. There’s no shuttle to book, no timed reservation, and no queue at a viewpoint. You park, you walk, and inside an hour or two you’re standing over water the colour of glacial melt without having driven anywhere near the national park boundary.

That last point matters more than it sounds. Grassi Lakes sits within the town of Canmore, not inside Banff National Park, which changes two practical things: no Parks Canada day pass applies here, and the trailhead parking is free rather than metered. A fair number of visitors assume every hike in the Bow Valley falls under the park’s pass system and either buy one they didn’t need or worry they’re missing one they don’t have to buy. Neither applies at this trailhead.

This guide covers the Grassi Lakes trail itself: getting to the trailhead, the two route options up to the lakes, what the lakes actually look like depending on the season, and how the hike compares to its two better-known neighbours. It doesn’t cover Ha Ling Peak, the steep summit hike that shares this same parking lot, or Grotto Canyon, a separate slot canyon elsewhere in the Canmore area — both get their own dedicated pages, linked below.

Getting to the trailhead

Canmore is 26 km from Banff, about a 20-minute drive along the Trans-Canada Highway (Highway 1), and the Grassi Lakes trailhead sits a further five minutes from downtown Canmore. From the highway, take the Canmore town exits, follow signs toward the Nordic Centre or Spray Lakes, and turn onto Centennial Drive, which leads past Quarry Lake to a signed parking lot for Grassi Lakes and Ha Ling Peak. Searching “Grassi Lakes parking lot” or “Quarry Lake, Canmore” in GPS navigation gets you there directly.

From	Distance	Drive time
Banff townsite	26 km	20 min
Canmore downtown	~4 km	5–8 min
Calgary (YYC)	~110 km	1 h 15
Kananaskis (Highway 40)	~40 km	35–40 min

The lot is small and shared with hikers heading up Ha Ling Peak, so it fills by mid-morning on summer weekends and during the two weeks in late September when the larches turn gold in nearby valleys and traffic through Canmore spikes generally. Arriving before 9 a.m. or after mid-afternoon avoids most of the crowding. There’s an outhouse at the trailhead but no water, food, or gas — the last services are in downtown Canmore, a few minutes back the way you came.

Roam Transit, the public bus network that covers Banff and Canmore, does not run a route to this trailhead, so a hike here requires a car, taxi, rideshare, or a spot on a guided tour that includes transport.

Two routes, one destination

From the trailhead, the path splits into two options that both end at the same lakes. Neither is officially “the” trail — they’re simply different ways up the same limestone slope, and many hikers go up one and down the other.

	Easy trail	Steep (original) trail
Distance (return)	~4 km	~3.5 km
Elevation gain	~150 m	~150 m, more concentrated
Surface	Gravel switchbacks	Rock steps, an old quarry road, uneven footing
Typical time	1.5–2 h	1.5–2 h
Best suited to	Families, first-time hikers, limited mobility	Hikers comfortable with steeper, rougher ground

The easy trail climbs in a series of graded switchbacks through forest, a straightforward walk that suits hiking boots or sturdy runners and works well with kids. It’s the better choice if you’re combining Grassi Lakes with another activity the same day and don’t want sore legs going into it.

The steeper original trail follows an old mining access road past the remnants of a limestone quarry, then climbs more directly via a set of built stairs and a short section near a seasonal waterfall. It’s not technical, but the footing is looser and the grade less forgiving, so trekking poles help, especially descending. Some hikers go up the steep trail for the more interesting terrain and old quarry structures, then take the easier switchbacks down to save their knees.

Either way, budget an hour and a half to two hours round trip at an unhurried pace, more if you plan to sit at the lakes for a while, which most people do.

What you’ll find at the lakes

The trail opens onto two small lakes connected by a short natural land bridge, with a limestone cliff rising directly behind the upper lake. The colour is the main event: clear, mineral-rich water that reads turquoise to deep green depending on the light and the angle, similar in character to the much larger lakes deeper in the Rockies but on a scale you can walk around in a few minutes. A short seasonal waterfall drops into the canyon near the upper lake, more forceful in early summer during snowmelt and reduced to a trickle by late summer.

Look up at the canyon wall near the base of the falls and you’ll find faint pictographs on the rock face, left by Indigenous people long before Lawrence Grassi ever built a trail here — a reminder that this canyon was known and used well before it had an English name. There’s no interpretive signage at the pictographs themselves, so it’s easy to walk past without noticing; they’re worth a slower look on the way up.

The lakes are small enough to fully explore in twenty or thirty minutes, and most visitors treat the destination as a place to sit, take photos, and eat lunch rather than a base for further exploration — there’s no trail continuing past the lakes themselves, though Ha Ling Peak’s route begins from the same general area and climbs on from there.

Who was Grassi, and why does a mining trail lead to turquoise lakes

The lakes and trail are named for Lawrence Grassi, an Italian-born miner who settled in Canmore in the early 1900s and worked at the town’s coal mine while building hiking trails in his spare time, largely for his own enjoyment and that of his neighbours. He’s credited with cutting and maintaining an extensive network of paths around Canmore and as far as Lake Louise, including stonework still in use on the trail to the Beehive above Lake Louise. The steep original trail up to Grassi Lakes, with its stairs and quarry-road alignment, follows ground shaped by that same era of mining and trail-building, which is part of why it feels older and rougher than the newer, graded switchback route built later to handle heavier foot traffic.

When to go

Like every lake in this part of the Rockies, Grassi Lakes is frozen and grey-white through winter and doesn’t take on its turquoise colour until it’s fully thawed, typically from June onward. July and August bring the most consistent colour and the busiest parking lot in roughly equal measure. September brings cooler air, thinner crowds on weekdays, and — during the last two weeks of the month — a spike in regional traffic as visitors head into nearby valleys to see the larches turn gold, which can fill the Grassi Lakes lot even though the larches themselves aren’t part of this hike.

Winter access is possible and popular with locals: the frozen waterfall in the canyon draws ice climbers, and the trail itself gets a firm base of packed snow and ice that calls for microspikes or similar traction devices, particularly on the steeper original route. The lakes themselves are ice-covered and not the draw in winter — the appeal shifts to the canyon and the ice formations rather than the water colour.

How it compares to Ha Ling Peak and Grotto Canyon

Grassi Lakes shares its trailhead and parking lot with the trail up Ha Ling Peak, which is a different hike entirely: an 8.5 km round trip climbing roughly 700 m to a 2,675 m summit with sweeping views over the Bow Valley, rated moderate to hard and taking most hikers four to six hours. If you’re looking at that trail description and expecting something closer to the short walk described here, you’re looking at the wrong page — see the dedicated Ha Ling Peak guide for that hike’s details.

Grotto Canyon is a separate canyon walk elsewhere in the Canmore area, reached from its own trailhead off the highway rather than from Centennial Drive, and it’s known for its own set of pictographs and a slot-canyon feel rather than a pair of lakes. It’s not the same outing as Grassi Lakes despite both being short, family-friendly Canmore hikes, and it’s covered on its own page as well.

Of the three, Grassi Lakes is the shortest and gentlest, Grotto Canyon runs a similar length but through narrower canyon terrain, and Ha Ling Peak is a genuinely different, much longer effort. A reasonable rule of thumb: choose Grassi Lakes if you have half a day and want turquoise water without a hard climb, choose Grotto Canyon if you’d rather walk through a canyon than beside lakes, and reserve Ha Ling Peak for a day when you actually want a summit.

Combining Grassi Lakes with the rest of Canmore

Because the hike takes under two hours, most visitors pair it with other things to do in Canmore the same day rather than treating it as a standalone trip from Banff. Downtown Canmore’s restaurants and breweries are a five-minute drive back from the trailhead, and the town itself rewards a slower look — see our guide to spending one day in Canmore for a fuller itinerary. Quarry Lake, right beside the trailhead parking lot, is a popular dog-friendly swimming spot in summer if you want to cool off after the hike.

For hikers deciding between Grassi Lakes and other options in the region, our roundup of Banff’s best day hikes by difficulty places it firmly in the easy tier alongside Tunnel Mountain, while a longer piece on easy, accessible trails near Banff covers gentler options for anyone hiking with mobility considerations.

If Grassi Lakes leaves you wanting a bigger day out, Kananaskis is about 40 minutes further and covered in its own guide to its separate conservation pass, which is unrelated to the Banff National Park pass and unrelated to this trailhead as well — see our broader explainer on the Parks Canada pass system for the full picture of which pass applies where.

Cyclists sometimes reach the general Canmore trail network via the paved Legacy Trail between Banff and Canmore, and mountain bikers looking for something more technical than Grassi Lakes should look at our guide to Canmore’s mountain biking trails. Anyone comparing this hike to canyon walks elsewhere in the park should also read our page on Johnston Canyon and the Ink Pots, which is inside Banff National Park and does require a park pass, unlike Grassi Lakes.

What to bring

Sturdy footwear matters more on the steep original trail than on the graded switchbacks, but either route benefits from real hiking shoes rather than sandals — the ground is uneven near the lakes and slick when wet. Bear spray is worth carrying, as it is on nearly every trail in the Bow Valley; see our page on bear safety and carrying bear spray, including the reminder that it can’t travel in checked or carry-on luggage and needs to be bought or rented locally. There’s no water source along the trail, so bring what you’ll need, particularly on warm summer afternoons when the climb has no shade for long stretches.

Hiking with a guide

Grassi Lakes doesn’t require a guide — the trail is well-marked and short enough that most visitors do it independently. That said, a guided option adds context the trail signage doesn’t: the pictographs, the mining history, and identification of the plants and wildlife signs along the way, plus the convenience of transport if you’re not renting a car. A small-group tour that covers both Grassi Lakes and Grotto Canyon in a single outing from Banff suits visitors who want to see both short Canmore hikes without arranging two separate trips.

For a more personalized pace, a private two-hour guided nature walk around Canmore can be built around Grassi Lakes specifically, and hikers who’d rather turn the outing into a longer, more relaxed day can look at a private guided hike that includes a proper lunch stop rather than a granola bar at the trailhead.

Grassi Lakes trail: frequently asked questions

How long is the Grassi Lakes trail?

The easy route is about 4 km return with roughly 150 m of elevation gain, usually 1.5 to 2 hours at a relaxed pace. The steeper original trail is closer to 3.5 km return but climbs more sharply over rougher footing, taking a similar amount of time for most people.

Is Grassi Lakes an easy hike?

The main gravel trail is rated easy to moderate and is one of the gentlest lake hikes near Canmore, with switchbacks instead of a straight climb. The alternative original trail past the old quarry is steeper, rockier, and better suited to hikers comfortable with uneven footing.

Do I need a Parks Canada pass to hike Grassi Lakes?

No. Grassi Lakes is in Canmore, which sits outside Banff National Park, so the Parks Canada day pass required inside the park does not apply at this trailhead. Parking at the trailhead is free.

Are the Grassi Lakes really turquoise?

Yes, in summer. The lower and upper lakes take on a distinct blue-green colour once they’re free of ice, usually from June through early autumn. Photos taken in winter or during spring runoff show the lakes grey, murky, or partly frozen instead.

Which trail should I take, the easy one or the steep one?

Take the main gravel trail if you’re hiking with young kids, have limited mobility, or simply want the shortest path to the lakes. Take the steeper original trail, past the old quarry and a set of built stairs, if you want a bit more of a workout and don’t mind loose rock underfoot.

Is Grassi Lakes the same hike as Ha Ling Peak?

No. Both trails share the same trailhead and parking lot in Canmore, but Grassi Lakes is a short, mostly flat walk to two small lakes, while Ha Ling Peak continues up a steep 8.5 km round trip to a 2,675 m summit. They’re separate hikes for separate fitness levels.

Can you hike Grassi Lakes in winter?

Yes, with proper footwear. The lakes freeze over and the canyon’s waterfall turns to ice, drawing local ice climbers, but the trail itself gets packed snow and ice that call for microspikes or similar traction. Trekking poles help on the steeper original route.

Is the Grassi Lakes trailhead the same as the one for Grotto Canyon?

No, they’re different trailheads on different roads. Grassi Lakes starts from the parking lot off Centennial Drive near Quarry Lake, while Grotto Canyon’s trailhead is off the Trans-Canada Highway further from downtown Canmore. Both are short Canmore hikes but they don’t connect.