Exploring Johnston Canyon’s Secret Cave

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Two Restless Homebodies: World travel for introverts and couples

4 min readDec 1, 2017

If you’ve heard of Banff, Alberta’s Johnston Canyon, you’ve probably heard of the Secret Cave.

While doing research for our trip, we found that Johnston Canyon is widely recognized for its well-maintained trails, unique walkways bolted to the canyon walls, and beautiful upper and lower falls. But we quickly discovered that it’s also become Insta-famous for one of its slightly more hidden attractions.

The Secret Cave is an off-trail feature that consists of a beautiful, shale- and rock-filled cave whose mouth faces out on a small, turquoise waterfall and a gigantic, upside-down Dorito-shaped rock. It’s cooler than it sounds!

Boyfriend Perspective: You’re supposed to stay on the trail in Johnston Canyon, so for you (and us) straight-edge, follow the rules types, finding the Secret Cave can be a tad exciting when you’re down there trying not to be spotted by anyone.

Pro tips for navigating Johnston Canyon

No, it’s not backwards… it’s French ;)

First marker at the trailhead

Arrive EARLY. So early. We arrived around 9am on a Friday, and were still competing for trail and falls space with a couple large buses of tourists. They really started pouring in by the time we left around 11:30am — some of the single-file portions of the trail were mildly bottlenecking.
The washrooms at the trailhead are actually really nice. They’re solar powered and even have space heaters in the winter — as our butts discovered, that’s a bit of a luxury at this latitude!
Wear shoes with decent traction, because you might be able to walk the “trail” in flip flops, but stopping off is a little different. I wore Chucks and Luke had Pumas. Did they work? Sure. But wet, hard-packed dirt gets slippery.
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Finding the Secret Cave

The slippery way out of the Secret Cave

One of the canyon’s amazing suspended walkways

Despite speed walking to outpace the tourist groups, we still gawked at the walkways and stopped like typical visitors at lower falls and other scenic points along the way.

We’ve found plenty of guides that will help you, either via writeup or video.

Even with that, we still managed to follow a couple wrong paths — all worn, all muddy, all “obvious.” But, then again, maybe that’s the reason almost no one has posted a shot of the path — finding it is part of the adventure ;)

Eventually, we passed a pointed overlook, and heard the sound of running water below. We went down a large set of stairs, and shortly thereafter found the path.

Now, the ground has already been disturbed, as the path is well-worn, but please ensure that you don’t touch or step on any of the intact flora — national parks are whole, and sometimes fragile, ecosystems and shouldn’t be messed with. Be as responsible as possible.

Once we got about halfway down the path, boom — there it was. The rock of our dreams. I still get a giddy grin just thinking about it!