Initial Impressions: Lake Louise

It’s the age-old skiers dilemma—finding a consistently good ski mountain for the month of December. It’s tough to book a vacation that you can depend on for good snow during this part of the season, even in the venerable mountains of Colorado and Utah. But what if you go north—so far north that you’re guaranteed to have below-freezing weather with high-quality snow? Have you gamed the system and found yourself a perfect December ski trip?

This season, we decided to book a trip to Lake Louise right before New Years to see for ourselves. And while the snow was great and the mountain was almost entirely open, one thing nearly ruined the entire trip: the temperature. Canada isn’t exactly known for its warm weather, but this trip was truly frigid. Base temperatures varied between -10°F (-23°C) and -24°F (-31°C), with upper mountain areas getting as low as negative 38 (-39°C). The highest it got on the entire trip was a balmy negative 2°F (-18°C). Even if the snow is as high quality as it gets, those are temperatures that a lot of people will not want to be outside for.

But coming all the way from the United States, it would have been a complete tragedy to not hit the slopes. So some laps had to be done on what felt more like a frigid icebox than an actual outdoor ski resort. If we hadn’t had the nerve to get out to the slopes the first day, we might have never gone.

The extreme cold warranted some extraordinary measures to stay properly protected. While a typical skier or rider might wear 2-3 layers on a normal ski day, this trip warranted 6 to 7. If left unprotected with your goggles, your eyebrows and eyelashes would genuinely freeze immediately. Beards were not far behind. Even if you thought you can tough it through the cold, you’d have to worry about frostbite.

For further context, the battery on our GoPro usually lasts 3 to 4 runs before needing a recharge, or longer if it’s above freezing. For the week at Lake Louise, it didn’t last even a single run. But normally, that wouldn’t be a major problem, as we had a portable charger to get the GoPro back up and running. However, it was so cold that the charger froze and wouldn’t turn on. This meant only a couple of minutes of footage a day. And getting separated from your group meant you weren’t seeing them until 4pm—even though the mountain had cell service at least in parts, your phone would shut off immediately if you took it out of your pocket.

The effects of the extreme temperatures were definitely compounded by poorly placed facilities. The upper mountain areas are the coldest—and most of them are far away from the lodges, so there’s no quick and convenient way to warm up up there. The only frontside mid-mountain lodge, the Whitehorn Bistro, is poorly located and you have to go all the way down to the base after you stop there. When it’s so cold that you have to stop in after pretty much every run, spending time in this area is really inconvenient. The backside area thankfully has a lodge, but you have to make sure to stay on the right trails to avoid missing it.

So can you find rare, consistently decent December snow conditions at Lake Louise? Yes, you can. And on top of that, Lake Louise is unreal in how beautiful it is, and on a more typical day it really has a lot going for it. But you’ll be taking a considerable gamble on temperature at this time of year, and depending on who you are, you might find yourself gladly taking back some worse quality snow for 10 to 20 degrees more of temperature. The temperatures during our visit were colder than usual, but they weren’t unseasonably cold, and similarly frigid weather is even less out of the ordinary in January and February.

We hope to return to Lake Louise for at least one additional visit this winter as we complete our overall assessment of this epic Canadian Rockies resort.