Barb and Baden’s Excellent Mountain Adventure – Final

The other day we wanted to take a break from snowshoeing so we drove an hour down the highway to the town of Banff. While the Lake Louise area has a lot of outdoor activities (most within walking distance of the chateau), Banff is just a much larger town and has a much larger selection of stores and restaurants and after spending several days in the outdoors, it was a nice change to just walk around town.

It’s the Location and the Snow

When we were planning our trip to this area a few months ago, we considered staying in the Banff area and the historic Banff Springs Hotel was one of the options that we looked at. As I mentioned the town of Banff seemed to be a larger centre with many more options but in the end the scenic location of the Chateau Lake Louise won us over. I don’t think that I’m overstating things by saying that the chateau is the most spectacular location of any place that we’ve been in the world. It’s truly breathtaking. 

We ended up doing a fair amount of snowshoeing while we were here. We found out that there are dozens and dozens of trails in the vicinity of the chateau and we could probably spend several weeks here and never go on the same trail twice. Many of the trails double as cross country skiing and snowshoeing and some even doing triple-duty with having a separate dog sled track on the side.

And Finally …

Seven days in Lake Louise was just perfect for us. Since we lose the first and last days for travel, the full five days ended up being more than enough to spend enough time outdoors and also to explore the area in our car. Most of the pictures that are seen of the Chateau Lake Louise are of the summer time and this is indicative of the fact that there are probably ten times more visitors to the area during summer. This turned out to be a big plus for our visit as the hotel was rarely busy and all of the local amenities such as the trails we often had all to ourselves. Our visit to the Lake Louise exceeded our expectations in every way. We can definitely see ourselves returning back here again – perhaps at a different time of year to experience the area in a slightly different way.

Baden