Banff & Lake Louise

Banff and Lake Louise are where the Canadian Pacific Railway first brought travellers into the Rockies, and its two great hotels still stand there: the Banff Springs above the Bow Valley and the Château on the shore of Lake Louise. For Canadians they are the classic mountain celebration, about ninety minutes from Calgary, as rewarding in a February snowfall as in July.

Banff National Park was created in 1885 around the hot springs of Sulphur Mountain, discovered by railway workers two years earlier, and became Canada’s first national park. The town of Banff grew inside it on the Bow River, under Cascade Mountain and Mount Rundle; Banff Avenue holds its shops and restaurants, while the Cave and Basin, the Banff Gondola and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity lie within a few minutes of the centre.

Lake Louise lies about forty-five minutes’ drive to the northwest, a hamlet in the Bow Valley with its lake higher up, beneath the Victoria Glacier. Moraine Lake, in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, is its neighbour, and the Icefields Parkway begins nearby on its way north to Jasper. The colour of the water, from jade to turquoise, comes from fine glacial rock flour suspended in the meltwater.

Winter brings three ski areas within the park — Mount Norquay above the town, Sunshine Village and the Lake Louise Ski Resort — with a season from November into May. Lake Louise freezes and becomes a skating rink below the Château, the Ice Magic Festival fills January with ice sculpture, and the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival opens the season each autumn.

The lakes thaw in late May or June, and summer is the season for hiking to the teahouses above Lake Louise, canoeing and the drive along the Icefields Parkway; July and August are the busiest months. Mid-September turns the larches gold in the high valleys around Moraine Lake and Larch Valley. October and early December are the quietest periods, and the best time for the hot springs and the spas.

Fairmont Banff Springs, opened by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1888 and rebuilt in stone as a Scottish baronial castle, stands above the meeting of the Bow and Spray rivers. At Lake Louise, Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise faces the lake and the Victoria Glacier, open in every season. Above the town, Rimrock Banff reopened in 2026 after a full renovation as the first Emblems Collection hotel in North America, with a new hydrothermal bathhouse.

LVXVRY books all three through Accor Preferred — at the official hotel rate, with the privileges the programme attaches to the stay. It also advises on and arranges stays at the Post Hotel & Spa in Lake Louise village, known for its wine cellar and dining room, and at Moraine Lake Lodge, open only from early June to early October, when the road into the Valley of the Ten Peaks is open.