This spot is a 5-15 minute walk depending on if this is the trail or the platform. If you could fly in to Calgary, then rent a car, or take a bus line to Canmore or Banff and bus/bike/e-bike easily. Still impressive effort to get here for the lights at night.

Some of the best times tend to be around the spring and autumnal equinox. If I were to plan a trip that would be my choice time. There are quite a few factors that play into the Aurora making an appearance so it’s difficult to plan for a certain day. Normally you can make an educated guess for what might happen 3 days from now but that doesn’t always hit either.

Although this picture is quite "honest" when it comes to northern lights (at least to my experience watchin and photographing them, and compared to other stuff that is posted sometimes), an event this strong is the type of thing that only happens a few times a year, so you need to be lucky to see it during a travel... And you may still have a cloudy day to mess up your plans

I went to Iceland at Christmas to see the Aurora Borealis. Reykjavik is the best serviced airport in the standard auroral zone (sure, you can see the aurora around Calgary/Banff around the equinox, a couple times a year the aurora come down to Toronto, once every dozen years the aurora will be visible from rural areas in the Texas panhandle), but Iceland is consistently one of the best places on the planet to view aurora. And even there it’s hit and miss. We were there for 4 nights. Night zero our airplane flew 200 miles north of the aurora. Night one Reykjavik, nothing. Night two Hveragerdi, nothing because clouds. Night three Höfn, we could see a glow on the Atlantic horizon (similar to a white night in summer, but not really impressive). Night four, when we had given up hope, when it was cloudy and snowing, the clouds broke and we were rewarded with a bright aurora show in downtown Reykjavik til almost 3am.

My Aurora Forecast is the best app for seeing the Northern Lights. https://northernlights.online