Parking
Use the Lake O’Hara parking lot at the gated access road off the Trans-Canada Highway. Reserve the day shuttle; private vehicles cannot continue beyond the gate. Without a shuttle, the road walk is 11 km each way.
Overview
About Linda Lake Circuit and Morning Glory Lakes
Why go
- Links the Morning Glory lakes with a circuit of Linda Lake
- A varied route from meadow and forest to an alpine shoreline
Heads up
- The longer version is point-to-point and finishes by the campground
- The 3.5 km direct route is easy to confuse with the 8.6 km circuit
Map & elevation
The route
Loading the Yoho map
Full mapElevation1,963–2,091 m
Plan your hike
Before you go
Parking
Safety
5 active Yoho alerts
- ClosureYoho Valley Road closed for avalanche seasonYoho Valley Road is closed to vehicles from mid-October to mid-June because of avalanche risk. - Parks Canada’s current trail report lists no vehicle access to trails in the Yoho Valley.Official details
- CautionWatercraft and angling prohibited in YohoWatercraft use and angling are prohibited on all waterbodies in Yoho National Park until March 31, 2027, to reduce the spread of aquatic invasive species, including whirling disease.Official details
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Yoho Tour Guide
Your drive to Linda Lake Circuit and Morning Glory Lakes, narrated.
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Yoho National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Yoho audio tourMore stories near here in the app
- Lower Spiral Tunnel: Climbing Inside the Mountain
- A Predator With a Softer Menu
- The Bird That Plants Pines
- Sherbrooke Lake and Paget Lookout: Choose Your Climb
- 35 audio storiesacross Yoho’s roads, triggered by GPS as you drive
- Wildlife heatmapsfor Grizzly Bear, Mountain Goat, Black Bear, and 13 more
- Works offlinemaps, 54 trails, 58 places, and audio download before you lose signal
- CarPlay readysimple controls built for the drive
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Trail guide
Hiking Linda Lake Circuit and Morning Glory Lakes
The full routeLinda Lake Circuit and Morning Glory Lakes is the longer 5.3-mile (8.
Linda Lake Circuit and Morning Glory Lakes is the longer 5.3-mile (8.6 km) point-to-point route from Elizabeth Parker Hut to the Lake O’Hara Campground. It follows the Morning Glory trail network to Linda Lake, circles the shore, then descends through the Cataract Brook connections toward the campground. Allow about four to four and a half hours. A shorter 3.5 km one-way route is also marked through this basin; the two distances describe different ways through the same trail network, so check your map before setting out.
The climb and descentFrom the hut, the path crosses a meadow and stays fairly level through forest for about 1.6 km.
From the hut, the path crosses a meadow and stays fairly level through forest for about 1.6 km. At the ridge junction, a cutoff past Lower Morning Glory Lake returns toward camp sooner. The longer circuit continues northwest on the Linda Lake Beeline, which climbs steeply for the next 300 m of trail. At the top, follow the shoreline around Linda Lake and take the gradual switchbacks down to the Lower Morning Glory junction before continuing toward the campground.
At Linda LakeThe lake is the payoff: turquoise water beneath a steep mountain skyline, with a real shoreline…
The lake is the payoff: turquoise water beneath a steep mountain skyline, with a real shoreline circuit instead of a quick out-and-back to the water. Give yourself time here. From the shore, keep some of the dark spruce and mountain wall in the frame with the water; it shows the shape of the basin better than a tight crop of the lake alone.
A wildlife corridorCataract Brook is part of a larger wildlife corridor linking the eastern and western slopes of…
Cataract Brook is part of a larger wildlife corridor linking the eastern and western slopes of the Rockies. The surrounding highlands have seasonal protections to reduce disturbance. Stay on the signed trail through the meadows and lake connections.
Getting thereAccess to Lake O’Hara is quota-controlled.
Access to Lake O’Hara is quota-controlled. The day-use shuttle leaves from the parking lot at the gated access road and must be reserved in advance; private cars cannot continue to the trailhead. Without a shuttle, the access road is an 11 km walk each way. This route starts at Elizabeth Parker Hut and finishes by the campground, so plan how you’ll get back to the shuttle stop. Dogs can be leashed on backcountry trails, but they cannot ride the shuttle or enter the campground; reach the area on foot with a dog and stop outside the campground. Higher routes can remain snowbound into late June, so check trail and avalanche conditions early in the season.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Yoho
21 sightingsGrizzly BearMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
55 sightingsMountain GoatMost seen around 8 AMSighting map
61 sightingsBlack BearMost seen around 8 PMSighting map
66 sightingsElkMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
26 sightingsMooseMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
10 sightingsBald EagleMost seen around 7 AMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Yoho. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
