When: Available May to October, with daily tours from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Why: Witness a unique landscape in transition while enjoying mountain views, local food and expert storytelling.
There’s a moment on the Wildfire Peak-Nic tour when the forest, which seemed skeletal and blackened from the highway, is suddenly so clearly alive.
First, the guide points out the flowers. Then the wild strawberries spreading red vines across the (shockingly?) green forest floor. Then fresh willow shoots, which lure bighorn sheep to the area like catnip. Speaking of which: there, through the trees! A small group of bighorn sheep graze beneath a limestone cliff. In the distance, mountain views emerge through a sightline that used to be blocked by dense foliage.
We're on the Old Fort Point trail, which was caught in the path of the 2024 Jasper Wildfire. But it doesn't feel like we're walking a path of devastation; this is a landscape in transition, and to witness it mid-evolution feels special. It's like we've bottled a moment in time.
This reaction is a natural byproduct of Jasper Food Tours' newest experience.
“Our goal with this tour was really to change people’s perspectives about the fire,” explains our guide during a recent Wildfire Peak-Nic. The tour includes a 4 kilometre (2.5 mile) guided hike to a panoramic lookout, where a picnic awaits. Along the way, we pass through new growth forest in varying stages of development and learn how the wildfire affected the wildflowers, mushrooms, geology, wildlife and more.
My personal experience of the tour? As someone who has been exploring Jasper for nearly a decade, I was shocked at how much I learned and how fascinating it all was.
“There’s honestly something new every day,” the guide says. “Every day that I do this, I’m like, ‘Oh, this is so cool.’”
Origin of a one-of-a-kind experience
Jasper Food Tours' Peak-Nic tour (a wordplay on picnic) wasn’t originally designed as a wildfire-focused experience. But after the 2024 wildfire transformed large sections of the forest surrounding Old Fort Point, Jasper Food Tours adapted.
What emerged was one of the most unexpectedly meaningful outdoor experiences in Jasper National Park. Guests walk through burned forest corridors with guides who explain not only what happened during the fire, but what’s happening now. The “Peak-Nic” portion includes a hot lunch sourced from a local Jasper café, served using reusable dishes and low-waste materials — part of Jasper Food Tours’ broader sustainability focus.
Discovering a post-fire landscape
One of the most striking parts of the Wildfire Peak-Nic is how quickly it changes the way visitors read the landscape around them. There is a hidden world of stories within the ash.
Spruce trees, rich in flammable sap, burn black and skeletal. Aspens often survive underground and regenerate quickly. Douglas fir bark acts almost like insulation, protecting the tree from lower-intensity fires.
Guests learn how lodgepole pine cones only open after intense heat. They see aspens regenerating from living root systems underground. They hear about “zombie fires” — underground smouldering hotspots that can survive beneath winter snowpack for months.
At one point, our guide stopped beside what looked like a hole collapsing into the earth. Turns out it was once a tree stump. The fire burned through the underground roots, hollowing out the soil in the process.
What has changed since the 2024 Jasper wildfire
More wildlife sightings
The newly opened landscape creates fresh habitat, improves sightlines for grazing animals, and triggers rapid new plant growth that attracts wildlife.
Signs of this ecological shift are everywhere. “We never used to see bighorn sheep down on the trail where we just were,” our guide explained after safely guiding us past some animals. “Now we see herds there all the time.”
More sightlines
Before the wildfire, parts of the trail corridor were heavily forested. Now, entire sections open dramatically toward surrounding peaks and limestone cliffs.
Combined with the fresh greenery emerging within the burned area, the visual contrast is striking. Bright wildflowers against blackened tree trunks. Mountain ridges where once there was a green shield. If there's animals nearby, you're much less likely to miss them.
More ecological variety
With more sunlight reaching the forest floor, and ash helping to enrich the soil's nutrients, new plants are given a chance to flourish. By mid-summer, the trail corridors fill with wildflowers.
Why This Might Be the Best Time to Experience It
Wildfire recovery is dynamic. What visitors see on the Wildfire Peak-Nic this season will not be exactly what next year’s guests experience. Right now, the landscape sits in a particularly fascinating phase: visibly burned, but actively regenerating. The contrast makes the ecological story easier to understand. It also makes for a powerful emotional experience. There is no manufactured awe here; the tour is real, current, and evolving.
And because it combines guided interpretation with local food, mountain scenery, and an accessible walking pace, it also deeply enjoyable.
