Essential Planning and Seasonal Guides for Mount Revelstoke National Park in British Columbia

Coastal-inland rainforest meets subalpine meadows in the Selkirk Mountains

Mount Revelstoke National Park

Mount Revelstoke National Park occupies a distinctive place within Canada's national park system as a compact mountain park with exceptional ecological richness. Located in the Selkirk Mountains of southeastern British Columbia, the park rises directly from the doorstep of Revelstoke, one of the few Canadian national parks with an urban interface of this nature. The park's 260 square kilometres encompass a vertical span of over 1,500 metres, transitioning from valley-bottom rainforest through sub-alpine forest to open subalpine meadows that bloom with wildflowers during the summer months. The park's founding in 1914 came later than the major mountain parks of Banff, Yoho, and Glacier, which were established in the 1880s along the Canadian Pacific Railway corridor. Local residents of Revelstoke, organized through mountaineering and skiing clubs and the municipal Progress Club, drove the initiative to protect the mountain, building the first trail to the summit in 1910. The park boundaries were extended southward toward the Revelstoke townsite in 1920, solidifying the park's relationship with the community. What distinguishes Mount Revelstoke from larger mountain parks is its remarkable ecological compression. Within a relatively small footprint, visitors encounter globally rare inland temperate rainforest, significant caribou habitat, and diverse mountain terrain. The park's climate is characterized by warm, moist conditions that support the rainforest ecosystem, creating conditions more typical of coastal British Columbia than of the continental interior.