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The Canadian Rockies
Few Canadian destinations are as famous as the Canadian Rockies.
Every year 4 million visitors make their way to the mountains. Their
reasons for visiting are as diverse as the number of ways that one can
enjoy the mountain landscape.
Many arrive with organized group tours, traveling on motor coaches
and tour buses. Others come the the mountains in their private vehicles
and take a more leisurely approach. Still others pass through the
Rockies on their way to other destinations.
The Rockies fall into an Ecozone known as the
Montane (or Western) Cordillera. More diverse than any of Canada's
15 main terrestrial ecozones, it is composed of parallel series of
mountain ranges that lie perpendicular to the prevailing westerly winds.
This creates some of the wettest, driest, coldest, warmest and snowiest
landscapes in North America - and in some cases the entire planet.
The Rockies are only a small portion of the Montane Cordillera. They
stretch from the U.S. border with Montana and Idaho to the northwest all
the way to the Yukon and Alaska. The most famous portion of the Rockies
include the four mountain Parks (Banff,
Jasper, Yoho and Kootenay), Alberta's Kananaskis Country and Siffleur
Wilderness along with British Columbia's Mounts Assiniboine and Robson
Provincial Parks. |