To visit Yoho National Park (Lake O’Hara), you will need to book a reservation if you want to camp or take the bus into the park. These can be booked in late April on the Parks Canada website (this may change per year). If you are looking to visit for the day, you can enter a lottery to win a day pass for a roundtrip bus ride to Lake O’Hara. If you’re booking a campsite, the roundtrip bus ride will be included. Otherwise, if you don’t book, you will have to hike an 11km road to the main lake (Lake O’Hara). From the main lake, you can hike to multiple lakes including Lake Oesa, Opabin Lake, Opabin Plateau (the viewpoint), Lake McArthur, etc.
If you decide to hike in for the day, start early, be prepared and bring enough food, water, extra clothing, etc as hiking the road and to other lakes in the area is quite challenging. We did this last Summer and it was a lot harder than we thought it was going to be!