Hike to Grassi Lake

To get to the Grassi Lake trailhead, continue past the Nordic Center about 2km and take a small left when you reach a junction between a gravel road and a paved road. You want to be on the paved road, as this will lead you down to the Grassi Lake parking lot. The trail starts right behind the restrooms and goes for a bit before splitting between the easy (fire access road trail on the right) and the more difficult (trail with a view the whole way up, on the left).  We took the more difficult route up, where we had lot of roots, rocks and little streams to hike over, but also a very nice view of Canmore and mountains beyond. The more difficult choice goes on an incline for most of the trail, only sometimes flattening out for streams. 

At one point you will reach a view of the waterfall, here you get to the part of the trail that is steep with large rocky stairs, and once you get past that part, which is fairly short, you reach a bridge over the river, this means you're almost there! Walk up a bit more and reach the part of the trail where the two routes connect, here you will see Grassi Lake, stunning green and turquoise lake. From here you can continue around the lake and the path where the rock climbers climb, if you take the stairs all the way up to the top, you will reach another lake, this one not as pretty as Grassi, but still beautiful. Then you head back down to Grassi Lake and you have two choices, take the easy road back or the more difficult way back. We chose to take the easy way back because our knees were sore from coming down from the very top. The road back was a slow downhill walk, very easy, so I assume it would be easy on the way up as well.