I love going to Drumheller! It’s nice to check out the Royal Tyrell museum filled with dinosaur bones and to investigate a variety of exhibits. We try to go every few years to have fun and participate in the local hikes of this region. It’s a unique place to discover different landscapes such as hoodoos and canyons. With so many options to pick from, I’ve narrowed it down to four spectacular Drumheller hikes for you to explore with your family or partner.
Table of Contents
1. Horse Thief Canyon
Location: There are two ways of getting to Horse Thief Canyon from downtown Drumheller. First, you can go north on highway 575 until you see highway 837; take the right exit towards Bleriot Ferry. You’ll cross the Red Deer River on a small seven-minute free ferry and then make your way south to Horse Thief Canyon. If you prefer a more direct route, drive 18 km northwest from Drumheller city center on Dinosaur Trail (highway 838) past the Royal Tyrell museum to go directly to this destination.
Parking: The free parking lot is big enough to allow cars and trailers to park.
Washrooms: There are unfortunately no outhouses here.
Horse Thief Canyon is a sedimentary basin canyon with dry soil and plants such as tumbleweeds. It is a very unique area to hike where visitors are not restricted to a particular trail; many directions are possible.
Drumheller Hikes Exploration
Many dried-up creeks offer more areas to explore than just the trails. If you do find creeks with water, these are cool spots to check out. Kris spent a lot of time checking out the creek beds to see what he could find. He never found fossils but he liked the idea of potentially discovering something.
No Official Trail
As there is no official trail, your exit point might not be entirely obvious if you carry on quite a distance. We didn’t want to retrace our steps and instead chose to do a loop and exit at a different location. It was a bit tricky to get back to our vehicle. We had to go up and down a few hills to regain our visual location compared to our vehicle. If you’re up for an adventure, you’ll definitely get that!
Tip #1: Keep in mind that it could be more difficult to get back to your vehicle than initially expected if you plan to do a loop.
Tip #2: If you take a steep slope up or down, it could be slippery with loose gravel. Wear hiking shoes with good grip to avoid falling.
It’s a neat place to experience that is likely different from anything you’ve seen before. Children will love exploring a new landscape with the freedom to choose their own directions in the canyon.
Tip #3: Make sure you can see your children when choosing their own path, so they don’t get lost.
2. Atlas Coal Mine
Location: Drive 23 km southeast from Drumheller on Highway 56 and turn right to stay on Highway 10 east. Atlas Coal Mine National Historic Site is located at 110 Century Dr. W, East Coulee, AB T0J 1B0. This destination can be seen to the right of the road, approximately a twenty-minute drive from Drumheller.
Parking: There are plenty of free parking spaces.
Washrooms: There are washrooms available in one of the buildings near the parking lot.
Price: There is a cost to access the sites here. The general admission is $13.50 for adults and $10.50 for youth and seniors. The price is worth it for one or two hours of visiting.
Self-Guided Tours
The Atlas Coal Mine is a neat place for a light hike. It offers self-guided tours to explore the property of an old mine that operated from 1936 to 1979. It describes the lives of coal miners and how they worked on the last wooden tipple in Canada. The structure was eight stories high and facilitated loading coal into trains and trucks to deliver it away from the mine.
Tip: You might need to treat a sunburn if you stay in the sun for too long. Make sure to apply sunscreen before hiking in the fields, especially if the sky is clear and the sun is shining.
Mine Layout
The fifth picture shows the men’s change rooms, offering no privacy to take a shower back in those days. They took off their clothes and hung them up high with a pully system while showering. Once they were clean, they brought their garments back down to wear home after their shift.
Old Machinery
Many different tools, rail cars, and trucks can be seen in the fields nearby. There are also many pieces of mining machinery throughout the property.
Booked Drumheller Hikes
It’s possible to go on many additional hikes as well as booked tours on the property, should you want to pay an additional fee. They offer a junkyard archaeology tour (60 minutes), a processing plant tour (45 minutes), and a mine portal hike (1 hour and 15 minutes). Check out the prices here. Book the tours beforehand if you don’t want to miss out as we did!
Tip: Wear sturdy footwear while exploring this area, especially on tours, to have the best experience possible.
3. Drumheller Hikes: The Hoodoo Trail
Location: It’s a seven-minute drive northwest from Atlas Coal Mine National Historic Site and fifteen minutes southeast from Drumheller on Highway 10 east.
Parking: There is enough free parking for small trailers and vehicles. If you go in the summer, the parking lot might fill up quickly.
Washrooms: There are outhouses for your convenience at the parking lot.
The Hoodoo trail is a shorter hike but a great opportunity to see hoodoos! The area nearest the parking lot has a walking path with stairs allowing hikers to explore. Once you’ve reached halfway up the hoodoos, you’ll need to rely on your legs (without steps) to do the rest of the work to reach the top.
Tip #1: The soft rock can be slippery even when dry; rely on your gripped shoes to get you up the rest of the way. It’s especially slippery when wet; be cautious!
Drumheller Hikes: Picturesque Hill Top
Once you’ve reached the top, enjoy looking at the beautiful scenery. If you go in the fall, the changing colours of the leaves from a green to a yellow makes for gorgeous pictures.
To return back to your vehicle, head down the opposite side of the hill and explore that area on your way back.
Tip #2: The top part of the hill might merge into a narrow path downwards. Be careful on the steep sections.
You’ll likely reach a road at the bottom that will loop you around to your vehicle. You can look back at the fun you had climbing up the trail and remember the beautiful views that surrounded you at the top.
4. The Badlands Interpretive Trail
Location: The Badlands Interpretive trail is located in Midland Provincial Park. The hike leaves the Royal Tyrell museum and heads east to loop back to your parked vehicle.
Parking: Park in the Royal Tyrell museum parking lot (there is plenty of free parking for cars and trailers).
Washrooms: There are washrooms in the Royal Tyrell museum and an outhouse at McMullen Island Day Use Area along the way.
Paved Drumheller Hikes
The Badlands Interpretive Trail starts off paved through the soft hoodoo formations in the area. Wheelchair users can join for a walk but keep in mind that the trail is bumpy with many ups and downs as soon as you leave the museum. Families can walk side by side on this wide trail. There are lots of different rock formations to look at while walking.
Day-Use Area
Close to number one on the map above, the trail crosses the highway and continues on the other side. Just before reaching number eight on the map, the white line to the southeast takes you to McMullen Island Day use area with an outhouse. It’s a gorgeous walk in this area near the Red Deer River. The path until this point is lovely and wide.
Looking for Midland Coal Mine
When we walked into this area, Kris was looking for the Midland Coal Mine. We crossed the road again and ventured to the other side where you see number three on the map. The second picture shows us looking back at the scenery just beside the day-use area, once we had crossed the road. The third picture shows what the north side looks like. We were potentially going to get rained on. If it does rain, here are some tips to stay positive while hiking in the rain.
Tip: If storm clouds start forming, keep in mind how much further you want to hike or how long it will take to get back to your initial starting point. I was carrying a water bottle in case we got thirsty and had a few snacks if we got hungry but if it started to pour, we would have been in trouble and potentially have gotten very wet with no rain gear on us.
Exploring the north side of the road left us finding a different mine called Newcastle Mine. There wasn’t much to see at this location.
Midland Coal Mine Drumheller Hikes
Further up the road, we found an old miner’s cabin at number four. This was the start of the Midland Mine. The rain clouds spared us; allowing us to continue exploring north until number five on the map. We didn’t take many pictures since there isn’t too much to see in this particular area, but took a selfie instead. Most of the mine was underground with only a few scraps left to look at on the ground. We found an old gazebo. We weren’t sure if that was part of the old mine or randomly built there. A few descriptions were available to tell us what the site previously looked like but it was hard to imagine with barely anything left. Regardless of the state of the mine, it was nice to see more landscapes of the area, go for a walk and enjoy each other’s company.
Tip: Once leaving the day-use area and reaching the other side of the road, we hiked along the road since there was no longer a trail. Keep in mind that the mines are better accessed by a car when hiking with children.
Journey Back to Vehicle
We headed back to the North Dinosaur Trail since it was getting dark. Kris and I walked back to the day-use area, passing number seven and took the paved trail until we reached the road once again. Not wanting to take the longer loop on the paved trails, we decided to take the road back which was quicker to reach our vehicle. We watched for vehicles since there wasn’t a path here either.
It made for a very interesting day. We had no idea where we’d end up but it was fun to explore the different areas of Midland Provincial Park.
Final Thoughts
These four Drumheller hikes were so much fun to explore with Kris. We never know what we’ll find in the outdoors. There are always new places to see and discover. We didn’t see a mine but had a fantastic day on our Badlands interpretive trail outing. The Atlas Coal Mine had so many neat things to learn about as we walked around the property. The Hoodoo trail, although short, is so cool to see for yourself and take pictures. Last but not least, Horse Thief Canyon has various directions you can take while exploring a new landscape. These Drumheller hikes offer so many awesome photo opportunities to help you cherish special memories. Go have fun! For more fun day trips, go check out places near Edmonton.
Helpful Resources to Book Your Trip to Drumheller
Accommodations
- Booking.com – find hotels and accommodations
- Hostelword.com – find hostels
- Vrbo – find vacation rentals
Trip Experiences
- Viator – offers experiences
- Tripadvisor – find things to do and hotels in Desolation Sound
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