Alberta Trail Reports for Winter: Your Go-To Guide

Staying active this winter—and all year long—means staying up-to-speed with what’s happening on the trails. It’s essential to know if the features of a particular trail are suitable to your interests and skill level, and whether current conditions are favourable for your snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, or hiking adventure. There are many Alberta trail reports that can help you with that information. Here are a few of our favourite go-to trail reports for the province:

Alberta Parks

This site features 22 trail areas, mostly near Calgary with a few others scattered throughout the region. The reports feature regular updates and details about each trail in the given region, including the last time they were groomed. It also includes information about pets, areas that may be dangerous, and what types of activities are permitted on the trails.

View Alberta Parks trail reports.

Northern Region Trail Report

This site isn’t as well-organized or visually appealing as Alberta Parks, but don’t let that make you click away from it. It does offer a lot of good information for trails in and around Edmonton, including links to maps, social media pages, trail flyers, and even the people you can contact for more information about each trail. You can find some trail conditions listed right on the page; for others, additional websites and social pages will give you more info.

View Northern Region trail reports.

Cross Country Alberta

Here you’ll get a selection of trails from Northern, Central, and Southern Alberta. You can click on each link to go to that specific site for the most recent grooming reports, conditions updates, and activity information.

View Cross Country Alberta trail reports.

Trailforks

It features an extensive list of trails in alphabetical order by region, colour-coded so you can easily see which trails are open, which are closed, and which have minor or significant issues. By clicking on a specific trail, you’ll get more information about distance and elevation, difficulty, and what the trail is used for (skiing, biking, etc.). There are some photos, too!

View Trailforks trail reports.

Parks Canada Trail Report

On this government site, you can search conditions by national park. Choose the park you’d like to visit and check out the date the report was updated with information about safety considerations (including warnings and suggestions about ice skating), equipment recommendations, and closures and restrictions. There are also links to infrastructure projects (which may result in a temporary trail closure) and road condition reports. The important bulletins link gives information about new closures and restrictions.

View Parks Canada trail reports.

Alberta’s Iron Horse Trail

We strive to give you all the information you need to plan your journey along Alberta’s Iron Horse Trail, which includes links to weather updates for towns along the route. You can find additional information on our blog: in this post, for example, we highlighted several of the best snowmobile riding clubs in Alberta. The clubs offer more information on their websites about places to ride, often with additional links to conditions and more for a variety of trails throughout the province.

Alberta’s beautiful trails are enjoyable throughout the year, as long as you’re aware of and prepared for the given conditions. Most of these sites are well-maintained and regularly updated. But, you should always look at the date listed on the page to make sure you’re getting the most current and accurate information. If you have any questions about planning your trip along Alberta’s Iron Horse Trail, or if you’d like to report on changing trail conditions or share one of your favourite sites for Alberta trail reports, please contact us.