Athabasca Glacier Tour — Walk On the Ice, Not Just Over It

Is the Athabasca Glacier tour worth it? Depends which one you book

There are two entirely different products sold under the words “Athabasca Glacier tour,” and whether it is worth it depends almost entirely on which one you end up with.

The Ice Explorer. A large-wheeled coach drives a group out onto a prepared section of the glacier surface. You get out, you stand on the ice in a roped-off area with everyone else from your vehicle, you take photographs, you get back on. It is the Columbia Icefield Adventure ticket, it is sold bundled with the Skywalk, and it is what nearly every bus tour on this road means when it says “glacier.” It is genuinely impressive, it is entirely accessible, and it is also busy and brief.

The guided glacier walk. You put micro-spikes on your boots and walk up the glacier on foot, with a guide, away from the vehicle area. Three hours on the ice. You see crevasses close up, meltwater streams cutting channels through the surface, and mill wells — the shafts where surface meltwater pours down into the body of the glacier. That is the tour featured above, run by Icewalks, rated 4.9/5.

Neither is “better.” They answer different questions. If you have limited mobility, are short on time, or are travelling with small children, the Ice Explorer is the right call — and every coach tour in the cards below will get you to it. If you want the glacier to be the day rather than a stop on it, walk.

The one thing that catches people out

What you actually need to be able to do

The operator is refreshingly specific, so we can be too:

• Distance: 5 km round trip, 200 m of elevation gain.
• Difficulty: moderate. Explicitly suitable for children aged 7–16 who enjoy hiking, and for active seniors.
• Skill: “No technical climbing experience is required.”
• Altitude: the walk operates at about 2,000 m, and the operator notes that some guests experience shortness of breath at that elevation.
• Bring yourself: warm layers — sweaters and trousers. Everything else (spikes, poles, boots, gloves, hats, rain gear) is supplied if you need it.

What you are looking at

The Athabasca Glacier is one of the six principal “toes” of the Columbia Icefield — the tongue of ice that flows down toward Highway 93, and the reason this stretch of road exists in the tourist imagination at all.

It is also disappearing. The glacier has retreated more than 1.5 km and lost over half its volume in roughly the last 125 years, and it continues to thin by several metres a year. The markers you pass on the approach road are dated: they show where the ice stood in past decades. The distance between the last marker and the current ice edge is not an exhibit anyone designed. It is just what happened.

Standing on it, that abstraction becomes specific. The meltwater is loud. The ice under the spikes is grey with rock flour and blue where it fractures. Whatever you think about the subject in the abstract, this is a place where you can see the rate of change with your own feet on it — and that, more than the photograph, is the argument for going.

Athabasca Glacier tour price

The guided walk is $97. The Ice Explorer + Skywalk ticket is a separate purchase on top of most coach tours — or bundled into the all-inclusive from Banff at $267 and the SunDog Jasper transfer at $258. Coach tours that reach the glacier but leave the tickets out start at $69.

If all you want is the attraction ticket with no tour attached, buy Columbia Icefield Skywalk tickets directly.