Legend has it that somewhere high up in the mountains of Alberta lies a tea house hidden among a patch of pines in an otherwise barren landscape.

And by legend, I mean a bartender named Frank.

Let me backtrack. I was recovering from my Cascade Mountain climb at a local hole in the wall called “Eddie Burger + Bar” in downtown Banff. Being a few beers in, I was feeling pretty social and got to talking to the bartender. I was trying to pick his brain about some lesser-known hikes in the area to avoid the crowds (despite contributing to them myself). He began to tell me about a trail to a mountain teahouse…

“Yeah, yeah, the Lake Agnes Teahouse, I heard it was packed with tourists.” I rudely interrupted.

“No.” He said. “That's the quick and easy hike everyone knows about. That’s a highway rest stop compared to what I’m talking about.”

I raised an eyebrow in curiosity as I hid behind my beer, sipping it, embarrassed for interrupting.

“If you really want to see something cool, find the tea house in the Plain of Six Glaciers.”

So off I went, like a character in a video game on some epic side quest. I spent the rest of the night going over trail maps and cross referencing it with the notes I took at the bar.

Once I felt comfortable with where I was going, I crashed out and attempted to get as much sleep as possible. This was going to be a pre-dawn wake-up call.



Part I: Lake Louise Lounging

I woke up to a dark room. It was one of those wake ups where it takes you a second to remember where you are.

I had to get up this early not because this was going to be a particularly long or difficult hike, but because to get there, I had to first get to Lake Louise, one of the most popular spots in all of Banff National Park. The parking lot fills up quickly and once it does, they close down the area. If you don’t get there early enough, you are out of luck.

I hopped in the car to head North-West on the Trans-Canadian Highway. But before I left the town, I stopped to sample some of the local Canadian culture that is Tim Hortons breakfast.

It was okay.

The highway alone was scenic by its own right. The road flows along the Bow River Valley through the mountains. Flanked on both sides by unbelievably huge masses of jagged snow-capped mountains. But not the “so far away it looks like a fake painting” type. These were in your face. The kind that to see the whole mountain I had to hunch forward in the driver's seat as if I pulled up too close to a traffic light. So close you could almost touch them.

I was a little surprised once I got to Lake Louise. From all the pictures I had seen, I got the impression that the lake was in the center of a wilderness area and I would have to go on some sort of trek to get to it. But what the thousands of Instagram photos won't show you is that there is a small town built up around it. Complete with a visitor center, a mall, two baseball fields, some motels, and the massive eight-story Fairmont Chateau right at the lake shore.