Our groups spent 5 days in the Canmore/Kananaskis area Sept 5-9 and another 3 days backpacking in Elbow/Sheep Wildland Provincial Park Sept 10-12.

We had mostly clear skies with scattered clouds and 1 day of moderate precipitation on Sept 6th. Temperatures were ideal for hiking with lows just above freezing and highs in the low 20’s.
Generally we saw better trails than what the published maps would suggest, particularly in the less travelled areas.
There was evidence of bear activity throughout all of the areas including Exshaw, Buller, and Mist / Picklejar. The flower season is generally done with few blooming flowers left. The fall colours have begun but we would anticipate the full fall change of the larchs are roughly a week or two away.

There was good water flow in the creeks despite the relatively dry summer.
We experienced a very congested hiking and parking experience in the highwood pass area on the weekend of the 9th-10th.

Specifically on trail conditions we noticed a recent avalanche from last winter that took out significant forest and covered roughly 200m of the Picklejar creek trail right near the junction with the Picklejar connector trail.
Also, unfortunately, we saw and removed a significant amount of garbage and a smouldering fire that we extinguished in the hot springs area on the Mist Mountain route.