Hidden deep in the Rockies and only visible by boat, Spirit Island is one of Canada's most iconic places – and a sacred site for those who have sealed it off from the world.

On my seventh day in the Canadian Rockies, all the mountains disappeared. The previous afternoon, I had paddled for hours through Maligne Lake's turquoise-coloured waters, past glaciers spilling off the serrated teeth of the Queen Elizabeth Range and towards the towering pinnacles of an alpine cathedral known as the "Hall of the Gods". But when I woke up and unzipped the flap of my tent, everything was gone, blanketed in a wall of fog so dense it felt like a dream.

After wiping my eyes in disbelief and stuffing my gear back into the hatches of my kayak, I set out blindly into the void. The world soon melded into an ethereal haze beyond the bow of my boat. There was no clear sense of earth and sky, water and land or where I was.

Somewhere to my left, the heavy strides of a bull elk suggested I was being watched. High above, a 7,000-year-old glacier creaked and groaned as its meltwater tumbled into the lake. Up ahead, the murky silhouettes of evergreen trees appeared and vanished in the vapour like ghosts.

Still, I knew that if I kept paddling and peering through the mist, I'd eventually see it: Spirit Island, the world's most famous isle you can't visit.

Often called the "jewel" of Jasper National Park, Spirit Island is a tiny, uninhabited strip of land with a near-mythical allure. For much of the year, the island isn't actually an island, but a peninsula connected by a narrow isthmus to Maligne Lake's eastern shore. But despite being located 14km from the nearest road or hiking trail, and 49km from the closest town, this far-flung landmark has become one of the most iconic sites in Canada.

The island's striking position set against a ring of snowcapped peaks first captured global attention in 1960, when Kodak displayed a 18m-wide image of it inside New York City's Grand Central Station. In the decades since, Apple has used a photo of the island to showcase the camera quality of its new iPads, it's appeared in American films and TV shows and been plastered on roadside billboards across Canada. Today, tens of thousands of travellers every year head out on Maligne Lake to photograph the island's pine trees stretching skyward towards the Hall of the Gods.

"When you see a picture of Spirit Island, it's hard to understand that places like this exist in real life," said Tyler Riopel, the CEO of Tourism Jasper. "It's one of the most awe-inspiring places in the world."

Riopel explained that since private, gas-powered boats are prohibited in the national park, there are only two ways to see the island: by boarding a public cruise, which stops at a nearby viewpoint for a 15-minute photo-op, or by embarking on a 28km round-trip canoe or kayak journey from the lake's northern tip. "The [cruise] is a great way to see it in a shorter period, but paddling it is an unreal experience," Riopel said. "The whole majesty of it is best seen from that perspective."

That's because even though Spirit Island is small enough to cross in just a few steps, the only people legally allowed to step foot on it are members of the Stoney First Nation, who consider the island sacred.

"Since time immemorial, these mountains have been our home," said Barry Wesley, a Stoney knowledge keeper and language protector. "For thousands of years, we would go to Spirit Island to conduct healing ceremonies, but when Jasper [park] was created back in 1907, we were forced out. The Creator gave us a responsibility to look after this land and this island, and now we are finally reconnecting with it again."

While its official name is Spirit Island, Wesley explained that it has always been Githni-mi-Makoche ("Healing Island") to the Stoney, a place possessing immense curative powers thanks to its unique position bridging land and water and ringed by mountains on three sides. The Stoney believe these mountains represent their ancestors, and after sensing something deep from his family's past, Wesley set out to regain the Stoneys' access to the island and reclaim this small piece of the park.

Spirit Island is symbolic of a larger trend echoing across the Canadian Rockies, as Indigenous peoples are increasingly reclaiming access to ancestral lands once lost to national park creation. Nowhere is that more poignant than in Jasper, where a series of devastating wildfires have ripped through Canada's largest national park in the past decade, ravaging the land and calling the Stoney home to perform their first healing ceremonies on Spirit Island in more than a century.

Now, as much of Jasper recovers and parts of the Rockies grapple with climate change and overtourism, the Stoney hope that their sacred island can serve as an example of Indigenous-led land stewardship. And as I paddled through the mist, Wesley's parting message felt like a prophecy.

"When you go towards Spirit Island, you will feel its energy," he told me. "Take your time, listen and it will tell you a story. And by leaving no footprint, you will help it maintain that same energy so others can feel it too."

In 1907, a 46-year-old painter and photographer from Pennsylvania named Mary Schäffer Warren was chasing a rumour that had been circulating for years – that somewhere, deep in the mountainous folds of the Canadian Rockies, there was a "glowing" lake known only to the area's Indigenous residents. After searching for weeks, she failed to find it, but a Stoney hunter named Samson Beaver provided her with a hand-drawn map revealing the lake's location.

The following summer, the American returned, clutching Beaver's map and accompanied by three white guides and 22 horses. During the eight weeks, the party endured frigid nights, mosquito swarms and treacherous river crossings. But after climbing to the top of a mountain and gazing down, they finally spotted it, with Schäffer Warren writing: "There burst upon us… the finest view any of us had ever beheld in the Rockies."

Schäffer........

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