Sept 1 Banff – Lake Louise

The Chateau at Lake Louise

Moraine Lake

This area is the premier Canadian Rocky Mountain venue.  It was opened up in the  late 1800s by the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) and later created into a national park in the early 1900s.   The mountains here are truly spectacular, massive rock formations that rise 3 or 4 thousand feet  from the valley floor, with ragged peaks and knife edged ridges.  The peaks are buttressed with layers of snow and ice.  As an old mountain climber, I could not fathom a route to the tops of these mountains, although they have all been climbed many years ago.  The two signature hotels, the Chateau at Lake Louise and the Banff Springs Hotel,(both owned by Fairmont Hotels now) are remnants of that golden age of travel.  The pictures of that era show men in tuxes and women in evening gowns dancing to the music of swing bands.  It mentioned that guests would come and spend the entire summer at the hotels and open up $50,000 lines of credit.  In 1924,  $50K was real money..

About this same time the CPR brought over a number of Swiss mountain guides to guide the guests up the mountain peaks. Many pictures of the guides smoking pipes while patently belaying the climbers below. I have heard stories about these old guides, they pretty much dragged their customers up the mountains rather than teach them how to climb. 

A number of the guides were from the Feuz family.  My stepmom, Ann was a Feuz.  Her family emigrated from Switzerland to Wyoming in 1910 . I am thinking that some of these guides might have been cousins to her parents.  Her family came from Grindelwald a village high up in the Swiss Alps.

Banff  is where is is all happening, Jasper had a modest city center with 3 or 4 blocks of restaurants, t shirt shops, and the like.  Lake Louise had one little shopping mail, maybe a dozen shops,  but Banff has it all, Starbucks, Safeway, Hudson Bay, North Face, The Body Shop, it’s all here babe. 

We did some sightseeing,(we saw a wild bear)  it was still overcast and occasionally raining, but we got in a hike around Moraine Lake, and rather than rent a canoe on Lake Louise, we dined at the Chateau for lunch.  We had the antipasto for two, and Bloody Marys seated next to the picture window looking out at Lake Louise and the mountains beyond.