Columbia Valley is a perfect quick weekend getaway from Calgary. Radium is one town in the Columbia valley. Nearby towns include Invermere and Windermere. Radium and Invermere are great spots to stay for few days and accessible ski resorts from here include kicking horse (golden), Panaroma and Fairmont. Radium is only approx. 2.5 hours’ drive from Calgary.
The info and pictures here are a mix from my visit in 2019 and 2024 winters.
Radium Hot Spring
Radium is famous for its natural hot spring pool, well developed like a normal pool but with the background and rocks around it, it’s an amazing experience specially in winter. It’s cold outside with snow all around but it’s so warm inside the pool. When it’s snowing, the feeling of warm water and snow falling on your head was a very cool experience. The hot spring is located right on the highway 93 a bit before the town when we travel from Calgary.
We love to spend our daytime skiing or exploring around and be at this pool in the night for a relaxing few hour.
Snowmobiling
We had an amazing time exploring Snowmobiling with Toby Creek Adventures. This was our first time, so we stuck to their basic tour (1 hour). But its definitely an activity we will return to for exploring the bigger mountains. Kids got some time to ride the small snowmobiles towards the end of our tour. I did call them and book this tour in advance.
Canadian Rockies Snowmobile Tours | Toby Creek Adventures
The Whiteway – Worlds longest skating trail
This is a 31km ice skating trail on frozen lake Windermere. Many hockey rinks, long skating track, ice fishing, driving cars on the frozen lake, bald eagles on the trees were a few things we came across. We joined a couple doing ice fishing and caught a rainbow trout.
Ice fishing
Skating the whiteway
In and around Radium
Radium is a cute little town and the entrance to this town is this highway lined by these majestic rocky section
In and around radium we always spot big horn sheep. They just love the rocky terrain.
Once while we were walking around the town, there was a bunch of turkey out for a stroll
Panorama ski resort
Just an amazing place for skiers. Please check out their website Panorama Mountain Resort – British Columbia Ski-in / Ski-out Destination. They have a gondola from the parking lot to the ski resort. They have a surface lift at the beginner area. The drive to the ski resort is pretty cool with a creek/river (Tobby Creek) right by the roadside. Panaroma’s cute pet name is Pano !
Skiing at pano
Fairmont ski resort
They do have a hot spring pool as well, but we haven’t explored that one as I was so impressed with Radium hot spring and didn’t want to try out this one. The drive to Fairmont is beautiful and uphill mostly. They have a surface lift at the beginner area.
