Columbia Icefield Skywalk: Jasper's Glass Platform Above Sunwapta Valley

High above the Sunwapta Valley in Jasper National Park, a curved walkway of weathering steel and glass juts out from the cliff edge. The Columbia Icefield Skywalk, opened in 2014 as the Glacier Skywalk, puts nothing but glass between your boots and a 280-metre drop, with the peaks and glaciers of the Canadian Rockies all around.

What is the Columbia Icefield Skywalk?

The Skywalk is a one-kilometre interpretive walkway along the edge of the Sunwapta Valley that ends at a glass-floored lookout. That platform, called the Discovery Vista, reaches about 35 metres (115 feet) out from the cliff face and stands 280 metres (918 feet) above the valley floor.

Along the way, displays explain how the Rockies formed and point out fossils and other geological features. From the end of the walk you look out over waterfalls, glaciers and mountains, and the area lies close to routes used by mountain goats and other wildlife.

Design and construction

The Skywalk was built for Brewster Travel Canada, and is now run as part of the Banff Jasper Collection. It opened to the public on 1 May 2014 and cost about CA$21 million, including planning, environmental assessment, design and construction.

• Design-build: PCL Construction Management
• Engineering: Read Jones Christofferson
• Architecture: Sturgess Architecture

Weathering steel was chosen because it is durable, needs little maintenance and takes on a rust-brown colour that sits quietly against the rock. Most of the structure was fabricated off-site, and a cable suspension system keeps the visible supports to a minimum. The design won the Future Projects award at the World Architecture Festival in 2011, three years before it opened.

How to get to the Skywalk

The Skywalk sits beside the Icefields Parkway (Highway 93 North), one of the great mountain drives of North America. You cannot park at the platform itself. Visitors check in at the Glacier Discovery Centre, about 6 km away, and ride a shuttle that takes under ten minutes.

• From Jasper: about 108 km south on the Icefields Parkway, roughly an hour’s drive.
• From Banff: 55 km west on the Trans-Canada Highway to Lake Louise, then 125 km north on the parkway, about two and a half hours in total.

Allow 30 to 45 minutes on the walkway itself and around an hour to an hour and a half including the shuttle. There is no time limit once you are there, and children aged five and under go free.

Opening season and the Columbia Icefield

The Skywalk is a summer attraction and closes each winter. The operator lists the Columbia Icefield experiences, the Skywalk included, as closed for the 2026 season, with the next season scheduled from 1 May to 11 October 2027, weather permitting.

Most visitors pair the Skywalk with a trip onto the Athabasca Glacier, where giant Ice Explorer vehicles carry passengers out onto the ice; the operator also sells smaller-group Ice Odyssey trips and combined passes. With the glacier included, plan three to four hours at the Icefield.

Glass lookouts over big drops have become a theme in the mountains. Compare Switzerland’s Peak Walk by Tissot, a suspension bridge between two summits, or the glass box at the Aiguille du Midi above Chamonix.

Related reading

• Step Into the Void at Aiguille du Midi: Glass, Height and Perspective
• Peak Walk by Tissot
• guide to different ice-cave settings

Sources