Call me a backcountry neophyte, but I never dreamed a $100-a-night lodge would lack running water.
After trekking 9 miles in the Canadian Rockies to reach a spot where cars can’t go, the notion of a long, hot soak in a tub was at least as alluring as the promise of a visual Rocky Mountain high.
“You can get hot water out of that spigot,” said the manager, pointing to a foot-long length of green hose hanging limply from an exterior lodge wall.
Chagrined, I filled the metal bowl and pitcher provided for washing, walked to my cabin and soaked my feet.
As the name implies, backcountry lodges are remote. And remoteness and basic comforts, like plumbing and electricity, don’t always mix. But the off-the-beaten-track setting is precisely the allure of these backcountry haunts.
Cut off from roads and the crowds they deliver, these lodges provide a respite from, well, just about everything.
And many are at their best in the heart of winter, when cross-country skis are the preferred mode of getting in, out and around.
Two lodges in or near western Canada’s Banff National Park offer different backcountry experiences. Shadow Lake Lodge in Banff National Park is a new, but no-less-rustic lodge. Lake O’Hara Lodge near Lake Louise has upscale ambience that attracts a cadre of well-off regulars.
Shadow Lake Lodge opened in 1991 but its origins go back to 1928, when the first cabin was built as a rest stop for workers building the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The original cabin, now surrounded by six new guest cabins and a dining room, is operated by western Canada’s first family of travel. Manager Alison Brewster’s great-grandfather started the transport company that moved the first tourists around the Canadian Rockies in the early part of this century. She represents the fifth generation of Brewsters to enter the business.
Three hours after setting off from the parking lot at the edge of the Trans-Canada Highway where guests abandon their cars, I came to a clearing in the dense forest where the fat, honey-color logs of Shadow Lake Lodge glinted through the trees.
A couple of backpackers were sitting on the porch sipping herbal tea and nibbling warm chocolate chip cookies. They read snippets from Cosmopolitan magazine to each other and discussed the pros and cons of psychotherapy. OK, so you can’t always get away from it all.
Brewster showed me to my cabin, third from the end in a gentle curve of six cabins facing a meadow and, beyond that, the impenetrable slate-gray wall of Mt. Ball. Shadow Lake, a short walk from the complex, is a hidden gem so clear you can make out the fluttery edges of underwater mosses clinging to the rocks.
“There are so few backcountry lodges,” Brewster said, “and the fact that we’re new confuses a lot of people. They don’t understand how we can operate in Banff National Park. The only reason we’re in this area is that my father bought the cabin from the Canadian Pacific Railroad.”
The Brewsters bought the cabin in the 1950s to use as a family retreat. In 1990, they got a permit to build more cabins and operate as a backcountry lodge. Plans are to add four cabins to the existing six, plus a central lodge with a shower and sauna. For now, however, a maximum of 24 skiers (figuring four to a one-room cabin) can be accommodated, and so booking ahead is a must.
Until a main lodge is built, the central gathering point is the dining room, where an endless succession of food is laid out on two long tables. Dinner one night was cream of broccoli soup followed by a salad of mixed greens, roast leg of lamb with red potatoes and pumpkin cake for dessert. At breakfast, there was granola, fruit and oatmeal, sausage and French toast, and after that, a healthy buffet of cheese, fruit, homemade bread and cookies for make-your-own lunches. Tea and cookies are served in the afternoon.
Guests can work off all those calories on a 7.5-mile track set for cross-country skiing in winter, and by hiking miles of pristine terrain in summer.
Supplies are brought in twice a week on horseback; waste is taken out by helicopter. Lodgers make do with his-and-her outhouses and hot water hauled to the cabins. Light comes from kerosene lamps.
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But travelers who can get beyond the lack of conveniences are rewarded with a spectacular setting that the crowds who stick to well-trod paths will never see.
Lake O’Hara Lodge offers more creature comforts, but is nevertheless unfettered by civilization, especially in winter. The major news of the day during my visit was that bear scat had been spotted on the fire road, providing the only real concern for visitors to this venerable lodge that might best be described as Martha Stewart does the backcountry. It’s a rustic experience wrapped in civility.
“You go to Lake O’Hara, and they put a chocolate on your pillow. At other backcountry lodges, if you find something on your pillow, you brush it off,” said a park service employee, summing up the character of the place.
Other basic niceties include indoor plumbing and gourmet meals.
In winter, the wide road leading 7 miles from the parking area to Lake O’Hara is prime cross-country ski terrain, and that’s how most guests arrive. Some 50 miles of cross-country trails lie within a 5-mile radius of the lodge.
The lodge is just across the Alberta line in eastern British Columbia’s Yoho National Park, about 8 miles from Lake Louise. It sits in a grove of larch and spruce trees that creep up to the edge of a spectacular milky-blue glacier-fed lake. Purple boulders are splattered with green lichens, Jackson Pollock-style. And all around, the Canadian Rockies, misty with clouds, rise to the heavens.
Lake O’Hara is the only backcountry lodge accessible by bus (in summer only). I took advantage of the transportation and hopped aboard the park service bus, joining a motley backcountry crew of campers and backpackers in fleece jackets, wool hats and bandanas. Inside Lake O’Hara Lodge, the scene was more genteel, with an older crowd, favoring tweeds, berets and walking sticks.
The main lodge, built in 1925 as a Canadian Pacific Hotel, is dominated by a huge stone fireplace that does duty year-round. Fat sofas and cushy chairs are arranged to catch its glow. Around the perimeter of the room are dining tables of various sizes, where young waitresses dressed like Catholic schoolgirls in pleated plaid skirts serve imaginative fare. Dinner one night was cream of broccoli soup with paprika quenelles, tomato salad with grilled radicchio, grilled sea bass with salsa, black squid linguini and vegetables, and for dessert, banana cake with vanilla ice cream on a spicy red wine sauce.
The eight rooms upstairs in the main lodge aren’t large, and they have shared baths, but they’re comfortable. The prime lodgings are outside on the lake shore, where 11 single-room cabins (closed in winter) with front porches are set a discreet distance apart.
In summer, when the cabins are open, the lodge accommodates up to 56 guests. But in winter, when only the main lodge is open, it can house only 16. Consequently, room at the inn can be hard to come by. Reservations are taken on a priority basis, with repeat guests getting first pick.
ACCOMMODATIONS DETAILS
Shadow Lake Lodge, Box 964, Dept. S, Banff, Alberta, Canada T0L 0C0; 403-762-5454. Open Dec. 26 to Easter and June 15 through September, depending on snowfall. Access is by foot, cross-country skis or mountain bike on an easy, 9-mile hiking trail. Visitors leave their cars at the Red Earth parking lot, 12 miles west of the town of Banff. Rates are about $68 per person, double occupancy ($108 single), including all meals.
Lake O’Hara Lodge, Box 1677, Banff, Alberta T0L 0C0; 403-678-4110 until the end of January, then 604-343-6418. Open mid-January to Easter and June 19 to the end of September. Winter access is by cross-country skis or dog sled (by arrangement) up an 8-mile road. In summer, a park service bus carries day and overnight guests in. The lodge is just inside Yoho National Park, 8 miles from Lake Louise. Day visitors can have lunch at the lodge on weekends in winter. Winter rates are about $116 per person, including all meals.