Jasper National Park: What Is Open Now 2026

Jasper is open, and it’s busy again: 2,392,849 visits in the 2025-26 fiscal year, within a whisker of the 2,407,529 it recorded the year before the 2024 wildfire. What hasn’t come back is the full list of sights. Maligne Canyon and Cavell Road are closed for the whole of the 2026 season, and campgrounds are running at 77% of their pre-fire capacity. Everything else - the Icefields Parkway, Maligne Lake, Athabasca Falls, Miette Hot Springs, almost every trail - is running normally.

The fire that caused all this arrived on 24 July 2024, two days after the town and park were evacuated. It burned more than 32,000 hectares, the largest fire here in a century, and destroyed 358 of the townsite’s 1,113 structures - roughly a third of the buildings, though the hospital, library and fire hall were saved. Recovery has been quick in some places and slow in others, and the difference matters when you plan.

What is open and what is closed (checked 2 September 2026)

The list below comes from three Parks Canada pages: the park’s own What’s open in Jasper National Park status page (last modified 24 August 2026), the park recovery page (31 August 2026) and the wildfire-area closure order in force since 14 August 2026, posted under the park’s important bulletins. Checked 2 September 2026; statuses move, so you’ll want to look again the week you travel.

Open

• Maligne Lake is open. Maligne Lake Road, the lake, the boathouse picnic site, the Bald Hills and Opal Hills trails and the Skyline trailhead at the lake are all listed as open; the road and the lake came back on 11 October 2024. You’ll find cruise dates and prices in our Maligne Lake Cruise guide.
• Icefields Parkway (93N), back in service since 23 August 2024, so the drive between Lake Louise and Jasper works exactly as it always did; Highway 16, Athabasca Falls, Sunwapta Falls, Miette Hot Springs, Pyramid Beach, Patricia Lake, Lake Annette, Old Fort Point, Wabasso Lake and the Valley of the Five Lakes: open.
• Trails: Parks Canada’s summary is that virtually all of Jasper’s trails have reopened. The Valley of the Five Lakes trail came back for summer 2026 after a rebuild with a realigned section, better surfacing and new rest areas; Wabasso Lake and Curator reopened too, and Trail 9, the link from Old Fort Point to Valley of the Five Lakes, is open again with about a kilometre rerouted onto the ridge and its switchbacks rebuilt. On the Whistlers side trails 5 and 5d are open and so is part of 5c.
• Campgrounds: eleven frontcountry grounds are running - Whistlers, Wapiti (loops AA to H only), Snaring, Miette, Honeymoon Lake, Kerkeslin, Jonas, Wilcox, Icefield, the Icefield Centre RV site and the overflow ground - and every backcountry campground in the park is open, at 100% of pre-fire capacity.
• Both visitor centres: the Jasper Information Centre in town and the desk at the Icefield Centre.

Closed or restricted

• Maligne Canyon - closed for the 2026 season. The limestone gorge with the bridges and the winter icewalk is off limits from the First Bridge parking lot to the Fifth Bridge junction, its picnic area is shut, and the closure order rules out winter access too - if you see an ice-canyon tour advertised for Jasper while the canyon is closed, don’t book until you’ve checked which canyon it uses. Hazard trees are down, geotechnical assessments are still running, and Parks Canada describes the reopening project as in early planning, with technical studies and design concepts under development.
• Cavell Road, the Cavell day-use area, Path of the Glacier (trail 41) and Cavell Meadows (trail 42) - closed for the 2026 season, which means no Angel Glacier, no Cavell Pond and no meadows hike. Hazard-tree removal and geotechnical assessments are complete; drainage and paving were scheduled for summer 2026, slope stabilization and retaining structures for fall 2026 through spring 2027, and the opening date will be set only once that work is done.
• Wabasso Campground and the Whirlpool Group Campground - closed for 2026. Wapiti is open on loops AA to H only; the rest of it stays closed.
• Trail 9C in the Old Fort Point corridor, the stretch of Trail 7 behind the golf course between junctions 7a and 7e, and Trail 5b (Swamp Rider) on Whistlers - closed. In the burn corridor, anything more than 5 m from the trail centre line is off limits.
• Tonquin Valley via the Astoria River trailhead - listed as closed. The Portal Creek approach is open.
• The Palisades Centre and the land around the Maligne Horse Range - no access, though the Overlander Trail (trail 10) beside the horse range is fine.
• Highway 93A at Mile 5 Hill - a slope failure and rockfall in spring 2026 put this stretch on the works list. Stabilization is due to start in fall 2026 with temporary closures possible, and Parks Canada expects the road to reopen for the 2026-27 Marmot Basin ski season, with single alternating lanes while work continues. Don’t count on 93A without checking 511 Alberta first.
• Honeymoon Lake Campground - hard-sided camping only, and a grizzly warning has been in force since 21 August 2026 because a collared bear keeps visiting the site.

The reason behind the two headline closures is the same, and it’s not bureaucratic caution. Both roads run under steep slopes that lost their trees, and bare high-angle ground sheds debris flows and slides. Parks Canada’s July 2026 update put dates on the Cavell side of the work - stabilization running from fall 2026 into spring 2027 - while Maligne Canyon has no schedule yet, which in practice means neither road has an announced reopening date.

Here’s the part that catches people out. Visitor numbers are back at pre-fire levels while frontcountry campsites sit at 77% of what they were. The same crowd is competing for a quarter fewer serviced sites, so don’t wait - book campsites and rooms earlier than you would have in 2023, especially for July and August. Commercial accommodation in town is open but tighter than before, because rebuilding is still under way.

What the burn actually looks like

Nobody selling you a trip will show you this, so it is worth setting expectations. Around the townsite and along parts of the highway corridor you drive through standing dead forest: black trunks, no canopy, snow or fireweed on the ground between them. It goes on for kilometres in places, and it’s genuinely striking rather than depressing - you can see the shape of the valley in a way you can’t when the trees are up.

Most of the park is untouched. Jasper covers 11,000 km2, the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies, and 32,000 hectares is 320 km2 of it. Drive twenty minutes down the Maligne road or south towards the Columbia Icefield and the forest is unburnt.

Maligne Lake and Spirit Island

Maligne Lake is 22.3 km long, the longest natural lake in the Canadian Rockies, and the road to it climbs past Medicine Lake into a valley that feels a long way from anywhere. The postcard - three spruce trees on a spit of gravel with peaks stacked behind - is Spirit Island, and it sits 14 km down the lake. There’s no road and no trail to it. You take the boat cruise or you paddle a canoe for several hours each way.

The lakeshore trails at the near end are free, quiet and open, which is a fair option if the cruise is sold out or the budget has run its course. For the actual booking mechanics, the Classic-versus-Premium tiers and the season dates, see our Maligne Lake Cruise guide.

The rest of the park

Pyramid and Patricia lakes sit ten minutes above the townsite: two small lakes with Pyramid Mountain reflected in them, an easy loop to walk or cycle, and the closest thing Jasper has to a sunrise routine.

Miette Hot Springs lies about an hour east of town up a dead-end valley, and the drive is half the point: switchbacks, sheep on the road, and a soak at the end of it.

The park has been a Dark-Sky Preserve since 2011, and with the townsite lights so far from most of the park, a clear night at a lakeshore pullout does the rest - that’s when the sky earns the label. Athabasca Falls and Sunwapta Falls, both open, are ten-minute stops off the Icefields Parkway rather than destinations in themselves.

Getting there and when to go

Jasper sits on Highway 16, the Yellowhead, roughly 365 km and four hours west of Edmonton. From Calgary or Banff the scenic approach is the Icefields Parkway, 232 km of mountains that deserves a full day rather than a transit. VIA Rail’s Canadian calls at Jasper station on the Toronto-Vancouver run, which makes a car-free trip possible if you stay in town.

July and August are warm, long and the busiest. September is quieter with better light and no bugs - you’ll notice the difference after Labour Day. Winter brings Marmot Basin, frozen lakes and the darkest skies of the year, though the classic Maligne Canyon icewalk is off the table while the canyon stays closed. Spring is the awkward one: high trails are still under snow into late June.

Jasper or Banff

If you’ve got to choose, the honest split is this. Banff has the famous lakes, the better public transport and the higher prices; it also had 4.56 million visits last year in a park two-thirds the size. Jasper has almost twice the area, roughly half the visitors, wilder valleys and, for the 2026 season, two of its headline sights closed. Anyone who wants a quiet week of hiking and driving will get more out of Jasper. If you’ve only got two days and a list of photographs to take, start with Banff.

How to spend three days

With Maligne Canyon and Cavell out of the picture, a sensible three days looks like this. Day one: the Maligne valley - Medicine Lake, the lake itself, the boat cruise if you booked it, and a lakeshore walk at the far end. Day two: the townsite side - Pyramid and Patricia lakes at first light, Valley of the Five Lakes, Old Fort Point for the view over the Athabasca, and the SkyTram up Whistlers Mountain if the cloud is high. Day three: south on the Icefields Parkway to Athabasca Falls, Sunwapta Falls and the Columbia Icefield, roughly 105 km each way, which eats the whole day if you stop properly.

Add a fourth day and Miette Hot Springs and a longer hike both fit. Anything shorter than two nights is really just a stop on a drive between Banff and Edmonton - don’t pretend otherwise.

Practical notes

• Individual daily admission is C$12.25 per adult; the separate C$24.50 family/group rate covers up to seven people arriving together in one vehicle. Admission is free for visitors 17 and under. Under the Canada Strong Pass, admission is free for everyone from 19 June to 7 September 2026, with parking and camping fees still charged; from 8 September 2026 the rates above apply again.
• Elk rut in the townsite in September and they’re not tame. Keep 30 m from elk and deer, 100 m from bears and wolves.
• Fill the tank in Jasper before heading south, and expect to be off the grid. Parks Canada is blunt about it: “cell service is available on each end of the Icefields Parkway but not on the Parkway itself”, and much of the rest of the park has no coverage either. Download offline maps before you leave town; a Canadian SIM or eSIM doesn’t help where there’s no tower.
• From 1 November to 1 April your vehicle must have snow tires or chains to drive the Icefields Parkway. Snow clearing runs 7 am to 3.30 pm, so a winter crossing belongs in the middle of the day.
• Book campsites and hotel rooms further ahead than the old guidebooks suggest - the same number of visitors is now sharing 77% of the campsites. Our camping in Canada guide covers the reservation windows and what else is running at 77% capacity; for a room or a lodge instead of a tent, see where to stay in Jasper for the townsite-versus-valley-lodges-versus-Hinton decision.
• Check the Parks Canada “what is open” page before you drive to anything specific. It was last modified on 24 August 2026 when we checked, and it’s the only list that gets corrected.

Read also

• Its neighbour to the south: Banff National Park
• The drive that links them, stop by stop: Icefields Parkway
• Picking a base: townsite, valley lodges or Hinton: where to stay in Jasper
• All the parks we cover: national parks hub
• The province around it: Canada by province