Behind the Veil

Oct. 15, 2022

Lake O’Hara. My fantasies of the backcountry paradise in Yoho National Park, just over the Continental Divide from Lake Louise, had kept me sane during a non-life-threatening summer illness. My desire to be there for our Sept. 2 reservation at Lake O’Hara Lodge inspired me to regain at least a bit of physical conditioning after three surgical procedures and four weeks without any exercise. I refused to let thoughts take over that I might be too weak, or not recovered enough, to hike. The fear was real.

On Sept 2, I stood in the parking lot at the bottom of the Lake O’Hara access road rising up into the mountains in front of me. Was I ready? I was there. Our luggage — my daughter Liz and her husband James and my wife Donna were on the trip too — was lined up waiting for the Lodge bus to come rolling down the road. Like magic, it appeared right on time around 9:30. 

Why do we go? Again and again and again. It was Donna’s 12th visit. My 11th, and Liz is already on her sixth trip there. James, my new son-in-law, has been there three times.

One reason is the stunning beauty. The ring of mountain peaks around Lake O’Hara, stretching down toward the Bow Valley, has been compared to the Swiss Alps. With good reason.

Parks Canada protocols also play a role. Every person who passes the hut at the bottom of the road for anything more than a day hike must have a reservation at the Lodge or at the Campground or at a small encampment known as the Elizabeth Parker Hut operated by the Alpine Club of Canada. On any given day, there are 100 people or less who have secured a space in one of those three places, and a seat space on the Lodge or Parks Canada buses both ways. You can walk in, and many do. But it’s an eight mile hike up the road (most people say it takes three hours) to try to take in as many sights as possible and then, you have to walk back down; no unauthorized camping allowed and no free ride on the buses. 

What do the access rules create? On any given day, in the more remote areas, you may see half a dozen people. On the longest round trip hike to Cathedral Prospect from the Lodge, I saw one other couple during the nearly seven-hour round trip. The semi-wilderness rules, and is not open to suggestions that the modern world should be allowed in.

The Lodge plays its own role in keeping O’Hara a paradise. Don’t get me wrong; it is not roughing it in backcountry to stay there.There are hot showers, or in my case, the tub baths. Electricity. A gourmet chef. A wine cellar well-stocked with Canadian wines. But that’s where any accommodation for outworlders ends. No internet. No TV. No radio. No telephone; well, that’s only partly true—there is a single public telephone booth down the road that takes credit cards where you can call out if there is an absolute emergency. We have even joked (more than half seriously) that the day the Lodge gets internet is the day we stop coming.

But I know how the isolation really works, why the outside world stays far away and cannot intrude. There is a shimmering veil at the bottom of the road, a fantastical barrier that separates the outside world from Lake O’Hara. If you can’t see it, or feel the magical transition that happens as you pass through the veil, (going both ways, by the way), you aren’t really seeing or feeling the wonder of Rocky Mountain backcountry. Once you succumb to the magic, you are in another world. Five or six days without any worries about what’s happening in China or Russia or Ukraine, or Washington D.C or wherever you are from. You re-emerge through the veil rejuvenated, maybe physically exhausted by the thousands of feet of vertical climbs and descents, but knowing that every vacation should make you feel this way. You can’t help but be thrilled and deeply contented with the connection to the natural beauty of Lake O’Hara. 

All behind the veil. Waiting for my next visit.