A cabin in the wilds
Shadow Lake – Alberta ONLY ON FOOT: GLACIER PEAKS, HIKING
From our lunch spot atop Ball Pass, a windswept notch in the Rocky Mountains that straddles the border between the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, we could see our destination in the distance. A sinuous, densely forested valley unfurled below us, flanked by glacier-clad peaks, leading to the tiny turquoise dot of Shadow Lake.
To get there, we first had to descend along a trail that switchbacked down a sheer slope of unstable scree.
Each errant step sent a miniavalanche of rocks sliding downwards. After a few slips, my fiveyear-old daughter, Natalie, her legs already jellied by the eight uphill kilometres we had hiked to reach the pass, began to balk like a nervous horse. As we gently coaxed her down, my wife Lauren and I couldn’t help exchanging nervous glances as the gravity of the situation became clear. We were in serious danger, we realised, of missing afternoon tea.
We were in our third full day of a four-night stay at Shadow Lake Lodge, a luxurious backcountry retreat accessible only by foot. We had come in search of a seemingly impossible combination: an intrepid, immersive, uncrowded and physically challenging wilderness experience that would nonetheless be feasible and fun for Natalie and her seven-year-old sister, Ella.
The uphill, 12km hike to reach the lodge, from a trailhead 15 minutes west of Banff, took us beyond the reach of the summer day hiking crowds. Once we were there, private cabins with solar power, heated showers and three-course meals – plus a decadent teatime spread if you made it back from your day’s adventure in time – made the trip more family-friendly than the spartan and gruelling backpacking trips Lauren and I had bonded over in our pre-kid days.
We first visited Shadow Lake in 2014, five months after Ella was born, when she was small enough to ride the trails in an infant carrier on my or Lauren’s back. But there had been a major change since that trip. In late 2019, the Brewsters, a prominent local family who had purchased the original lodge in 1938 and run it ever since, sold the entire operation to the Alpine Club of Canada, or ACC, which is best known for its network of bare-bones communal mountain huts.
With cabin rates starting at 730 Canadian dollars a night (about R9 000), including meals for two adults, it’s cheaper than helicopter-access options such as Selkirk Lodge and Purcell Mountain Lodge. On the other hand, it requires far less physical labour and back-country know-how than an uncatered hut.
Still, we couldn’t help wondering whether our stay with the nonprofit would be as cushy as our previous trip.
Our biggest worry, though, was the hike in. Once we were there, we could choose to spend our days as vigorously or as languidly as we liked. But the first day’s 12km were non-negotiable, so we started early.
Fortunately the trail, a former fire road, was smooth and gentle. The main hindrance to our progress were the berry bushes that lined the route: wild strawberries, raspberries, currants, bitterly soap-flavoured buffalo berries, and a bewildering variety of blueberrylike plants with local names like whortleberry, huckleberry and bilberry. Dashing back and forth between patches, the kids covered far more than 12km but arrived at the lodge with stained fingers and full bellies before 3pm.
Once there, the daily rhythm is as follows. Breakfast in the dining cabin starts at 8am. Along with a buffet of fruit, yogurt and granola, you order from an ever-changing menu of hot cereals, cooked entrees and baked goods the night before – and “all of the above” is a perfectly acceptable choice.
Then you pick up the bag lunch that you also preordered, and hit the trails. Get back by teatime, between 3.30pm and 5pm, or, failing that, for the dinner bell at 6pm.
Try to stay awake long enough to see the stars. Sleep, then repeat.
Each night, we shared a dinner table with other guests. For one couple, in their 50s, it was their first-ever backcountry trip. Another couple looked to be in their 70s or perhaps, the rest of us speculated wildly, even their early 80s.
They were true backcountry veterans, brimming with anecdotes and advice: which berries to eat, which side-trails to explore, where in the sky to watch for the Perseid meteor shower when I tiptoed out of my cabin to lie in the meadow at 2am.
We had gambled that Ella and Natalie, too, would see the payoff as worth the effort it took to get there – and they did. Even on our longest day, returning from Ball Peak, there was always something to keep them going.