In high season from June to September, popular places in Banff National Park can feel overrun by mobs of tourists and tour bus groups.

Kananaskis Country is a great alternative because you will avoid the high season crowds and the trails, mountains and glacial lakes are just as beautiful as in the Banff.

In terms of size, Banff National Park is 6,641 square kilometres (2,564 square miles) and Kananaskis Country is 4,000 square kilometres (1,544 square miles) of peaks and valleys in the Canadian Rockies.

According to popular legend, Kananaskis got its name 150 years ago from an early European explorer of the region named John Palliser after he heard a Cree tale about “Kin-e-a-kis” (the word translates as “the one who is grateful”), a native warrior who survived after receiving a devastating blow to the head with an axe in a fight over a woman at the confluence of the Bow and Kananaskis Rivers.

The local Stoney Nakoda First Nation refers to the Kananaskis area as Ozada, which means the “meeting of the waters” in the Stoney Language.

Archaeological evidence proves that there have been humans living in Kananaskis for over 8000 years.

The Kananaskis region lies within Treaty 7 lands in the traditional territories of the Ĩyãħé Nakoda (Stoney), Tsuut’ina, Kainai (Blood), and Siksika (Blackfoot) First Nations, and within Region 3 of the Métis Nation of Alberta.

You will recognize many places in Kananaskis Country from famous movies and TV shows as it is probably the most popular spot in Alberta for feature films.

Recently, the Netflix TV series series Last of Us was filmed in the area.

Famous Hollywood movies filmed here include Planet of the Apes (2017), The Revenant (2015), The Bourne Legacy (2012), Inception (2010) and Brokeback Mountain (2005).

Yes, you can see just as much wildlife in Kananaskis Country as Banff National Park.

The deep forests, valleys, and hills of Kananaskis Country are home to an abundance of western Canada’s most legendary wildlife. Grizzly and black bears, moose, elk, Bighorn sheep, mountain goats, mule and white-tailed deer, cougars, lynx, wolves, coyotes, and numerous ground animals.

Kananaskis is also ecologically important to Southern Alberta as home to the headwaters of many important rivers on the west side of the Continent Divide, including the Sheep River, Elbow River, Pekisko River, Spray River and Kananaskis River which form a significant part of the Bow and South Saskatchewan River watersheds that provide drinking water for millions of people in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

There are 370 named mountains in Kananaskis Country and the tallest and most prominent is Mount Joffre 3434 m (11,263 feet).

The mountain was named in 1918 by the Interprovincial Boundary Survey after Marshal Joseph Joffre, commander-in-chief of the French Army during World War I. The Kananaskis region includes eleven official mountain subranges but there is some overlap between ranges and groups.

One of the best ways to hike to Mount Assiniboine 3,618 m (11,870 ft), the highest peak in southern ranges of the Canadian Rockies starts in Kananaskis Country.