Paradise Valley Trail

Paradise Valley Trail is a Banff National Park hiking route built around the Paradise Creek valley, with the main pull being access to Lake Annette and, if you continue, the Giant Steps area. Typical itineraries run as an out-and-back to Lake Annette, with Lake Annette functioning as the common turnaround for most day hikers.

From the Paradise Creek area on Moraine Lake Road (south of Lake Louise), the broad trail climbs through spruce-fir forest along the north side of the valley. Early on you start getting glimpses through openings in the trees toward ice-capped Mount Temple.

A steady sequence of creek approaches and crossings guides you deeper into the valley toward Lake Annette. The terrain is gentle to moderate for most of the way, and the hike becomes notably more scenic as you near the lake basin under Mount Temple’s north face.

Lake Annette sits at the base of the Mount Temple wall. It’s reached after the forest transitions into an open lakeshore setting, and it’s a popular endpoint for shorter, family-friendly timing within the same route system before retracing your steps.

If you keep going past Lake Annette, the route trends toward Mount Temple’s lower slopes and includes a rockslide section along the approach. From there, the hiking line becomes more exposed to valley views while you move toward the Giant Steps junction.

To push farther, the route continues toward Sentinel Pass (the higher-alpine option). Reaching the pass involves increasingly steep climbing through talus and boulder fields, with the final approach on extremely steep scree-covered slopes; route-finding can be harder in places, especially with snow.

At Sentinel Pass, the itinerary opens up to sweeping views over the Valley of the Ten Peaks and the surrounding cirque country. The continued route beyond the pass drops down scree to the Larch Valley and eventually reaches Moraine Lake area via a longer descent through meadows and forested switchback terrain.

More information: Booking, Booking, Paradise Valley Trail to Lake Annette - Travel Banff Canada