Thanks for the input. I had it in my mind that Liard was much closer, it has been nixed. I should've mentioned that I just want to run part of the FTR, starting as close to the border as possible, and not much further north than Hinton, definitely not up to Grand Prairie. I wouldn't say offroading, but I'd like to get off of the paved high way. I may try to check out Waiparous Falls trail if time allows.
The maps make them look much closer than they are! It only tweaked for me because I remember enjoying Liard very much, but still having to spend many days cold and wet in the seat of my motorbike to get back home, and I'm in Edmonton so it's not even that far. The last few days of my trip, between Liard and home, just seemed like quite a slog.
Another option for Hot Springs is Radium, and the town is pretty quaint too. It's a nice route from Radium into Banff through Kootenay National Park -- all paved, but really nice and you can more easily do a loop that includes Banff/Lake Louise this way than you can with Liard.
Basically, there are two north-south routes and both are amazing depending on what you're looking for.
1) Icefields Parkway - this is an amazing route with only 3 "exits" to speak of -- one near Banff, one near Jasper, and in the middle at a place called Saskatchewan River Crossing.
This is entirely paved but it is by far the most scenic highway in the world in my opinion, and really gets you through the heart of the Canadian Rockies. Here's that route:
Glacier National Park to Jasper
If you wanted to cut out of West Glacier and head north, you could hit up Radium on the way and it only adds an hour or so. Less prairies to drive through on this route too:
Glacier National Park to Jasper
2) The other North/South route is the Trunk Road. It's all gravel and has cut-offs literally everywhere for camping and exploration. It's a logging road though and I generally advise getting a portable radio that allows you to tune into commercial bands (I think 130-144 MHz, but don't quote me on that) as many of the side roads are active logging roads. Trucks will call out their kilometre marker and "heavy" (coming out of the bush) or "light" (going into the bush). Generally you can't announce your location in the same way as these are commercial bands, but listening in can let you know when a few hundred tons of truck and logs are whipping towards you at 60 miles an hour on a dirt road! A cheap BoaFeng should do the job.
Google is being crappy about routing right now as some roads may be closed due to the spring thaw, but I imagine they'll open soon. If you look for Route 40 and 734, north of Cochrane, those two roads make up the bulk of the Trunk Road and you can navigate from the US Border all the way north to Grande Prairie if you need to.
If I only had 5 days, I would probably try to loop both the Parkway and the FTR in, heading through Radium & the Kootenays, and check out the Banff/Lake Louise area. After that I'd head up the Icefields to Sask River Crossing or to Jasper. At SRC, you can sneak out to the David Thompson Highway, Abraham Lake area which is a major wildlife corridor -- good chance to see bears and elk along there, and when we do the Icefields we often cut out around here to spend the night near Abraham Lake. Then I'd hop back on the Parkway to Jasper, then loop over to Hinton and take the Forestry Trunk Road south.
This way, you get to see the best of the Canadian Rockies, but if you are short on time or need to make miles, you can cut off the trunk road in a few places and hit pavement back to the border at high speed. By my count, depending on side trips this route is under 2000 kilometres from Northern Montana (Glacier Park area), which would mean to do it in 5 days you'd only have to average 350-400 kilometres per day. This is very doable in my mind but your preference may vary.
I would also double and triple check all these routes and distances, no guarantees stated or implied and all that stuff, but here's a rough guide of the route I'm talking about:
Trans-Canada Hwy to Jasper
Hopefully others will chip in suggestions on things to see and trails to run; I have less experience with specific routes and trails because I tend to be a "There's a road, let's follow it" on the FTR as opposed to planning/tracking where I've been.
