Canada has 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and it’s safe to say that visiting them all should be on the national bucket list. After all, these are places of unique physical and cultural significance worldwide. Still, a bucket list should transcend the thoughts of a committee, even if they get it right, and especially when they get it wrong. Some World Heritage Sites I’ve visited around the world consist of little more than historical rubble. Some sites are miss-them-if-you-blink-really-that-was-it? And some, like the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, are just so staggeringly gorgeous they belong in another category altogether.
In any season, Banff National Park is the picture postcard of Canada. Vast carpets of forest, gemstone lakes, and mountains with views waiting to kick you in the plexus. It took genius, and considerable Canadian elbow grease, to set up three different ski resorts in the park: Lake Louise, Sunshine, and Norquay. Come winter, you can literally slide down the wilderness that surrounds you.
Lake Louise, the third-biggest ski resort in Canada, is View Central. Enjoying the resort’s runs, I often had to stop and plop my butt in the snow simply to admire the vista. I was determined to hit every lift in one day, which I did, and was not disappointed. Thanks to its location inside a national park, respect for the environment takes precedence over the ambitions of a leisure corporation. Perhaps this is why Lake Louise is owned by one family, with patriarch Charlie Locke being the first guy to scale all 10 peaks in the area. Here is a mountain for people who love mountains: million-dollar views, not million-dollar condos.
Closer to Banff town centre is Sunshine, a smaller resort famed for its champagne powder. Staying at the Sunshine Mountain Lodge, Banff’s only ski-in, ski-out boutique lodge, it’s easy to awake each morning to catch “first chair” and reap the rewards. For skiers and snowboarders, simply catching first chair is one for the bucket list, anywhere, especially with a dozen centimetres of fresh snow on the ground. Sunshine has the kind of snow that makes your skis smile. This from a guy who grew up in Africa, who first saw snow as a six-year-old during a freak storm in Johannesburg, and was told to hide under his school desk in case it was ash from nuclear fallout. True story.
For all the snow in Canada, and the resorts that offer world-class conditions without even trying, what’s the big deal about the UNESCO designation? You probably won’t ski among moose and elk (although one instructor tells me his girlfriend once saw a wolverine). Sunshine, Norquay, and Lake Louise — the Big Three, as they co-market themselves — look like typical resorts, with lifts and quads and young Australians sweeping chairs in exchange for a season pass. There are après-ski bars serving craft beer and knee-high plates of nachos.
So how is this different, you may ask? It could be the views from the chairs at Lake Louise. It could be the snow at Sunshine. It could be the hominess of Norquay. It could even be the proximity of iconic and grand Canadian hotels: Fairmont’s Banff Springs and Château Lake Louise. On investigation, I can confirm it’s all of the above, wrapped in a shell of deep respect for its surroundings — safe, protected, but available to be enjoyed.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/skibig3