Sound Cushy?
Then consider these “optics” (as my children are wont to say). 
To arrive at this rustic wonder we had to slog over two mountain passes, traverse a frozen wind whipped lake, all the while breaking trail through two feet of new, wet snow. “So what?” you sneer. Belt that challenge out to my triumphant eight and eleven year-old and they’ll tell you this was no beaten path in the woods to some electronic toy-loaded resort.
Desperately Seeking a Challenge
The idea of a backcountry ski trip, as a family, into one of the most idyllic spots in Canada had been a rumour for years (about 11, the age of our eldest). Then, last December we decided we needed a challenge: Something that would recharge our sluggish lives, reunite us a family and test each individual’s staying power.
Armed with several pounds of jujubes and gummy bears we booked two nights at Skoki Lodge (on National Geographic Adventure Traveler’s Top 10 backcountry getaway list for 2004) and added one more element to the epic, we’d do it in the coldest month of the year, January. A month, that historically, the lodge (which has been operating since 1931, a year before the first lift-served resorts opened in North America) shuts down (and we discovered, is cheapest).
Granted, it was a shocking, balmy eight degrees Centigrade when we set out for our 11 km expedition (the lodge had been closed for a week obliterating all signs of a trail) into Skoki . . . but still, the distance was three times what our eight year-old son had ever done before.
With skins stuck to the bottom of our skis we slowly plodded north up the valley from Temple Lodge (the daylodge at the backside of Lake Louise where the trailhead begins), replacing the hum of chairlifts and lineups with the muffled whomp of snow sliding off a pine tree, the sweet whiff of needles and hairy little cones plucked from naked larch trees.
Can't Beat 'em, Bribe 'em
To remove the whinge element from the trip we set up a trail of bribery right from the get-go. The deal was the kids could have a treat (two jujubes) after every kilometre and wickedly we put our eight year-old in charge of this task knowing full well he possesses no concept of time. (Okay, so I felt a leeeetle badly when, after three hours of relentless climbing, he asked ever-so-meekly if we’d “finished a kilometre yet?”). He got five jujubes!
Skoki, meaning swamp by a local First Nations group, sits in a high alpine valley, cradled between the glacier spackled peaks of Skoki, Fossil and Pipestone mountains. Far removed from roads, the area was first scoped out by Swiss guides in search of a safe, protected swatch of the Rockies, aimed at gonzo skiers who weren’t adverse to working for their turns. In fact, fantastic black and white shots of knickered skiers in tweedy hats, flying through sinks of powder, line the log walls of the main lodge, as do journals and registries that date back to the ’30s.
If these creaky floorboards could whisper I’m sure they’d tell tales of the many mountain legends that have worked at Skoki. Peter and Catharine Whyte ran the place from 1931-33. Lizzie Rummel did the same in the ’40s as did Jim Deegan who is said to have skied the 38 km round trip from Skoki to the townsite of Lake Louise every day during the winter of ’46, lugging in perishables.
My favourite is the day he was hauling in a 115 lb. quarter of beef with a leg sticking out of his pack. The story goes that half way down Deception Pass, Deegan fell and the protruding leg knocked him out cold. It was two hours before he came to and dragged himself down to the lodge.
My Eyes are Dim, I cannot . . .
“So we can do it,” I holler to my little clan in the swirling wind at the top of Deception Pass at 5:15 PM, having just repeated this motivating tale. With the pale late afternoon light quickly fading we snapped on our head lamps and kept marching, following the crooked line of stakes that had first led us across Ptarmigan Lake, up over the pass and from what we could now see, down to the valley floor.
Now, two hours later than we had anticipated, we were getting worried not because it was cold (it wasn’t) 
but with kids you never know when they’ll lose steam and mutiny the entire trip. However, this is when they astonished us again, for after climbing Deception Pass, instead of collapsing they broke into song . . . “My eyes are dim, I cannot see . . .”
How apt! We grinned under our goggles, when 20 minutes later we were tromping through an inky black forest following the recent tracks left by Riley McGurk, a Skoki staffer who’d come to meet us. Long before we reached the idyll we smelled it . . . the homey whiff of smoke. Then a gust of wind would rip that hope away and we’d continue scanning the woods for a glimmer of candles.
“There it is,” yelped our youngest. “It’s not a mirage (a new word we had just been discussing), I really saw the cabin.”
But then we’d turn a corner and the vision of END would vanish. For 10 long minutes that image of Skoki taunted us until finally, there it was, a shadowy scene out of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Yes, Quinn had to test all six mattresses in our cabin, all overstuffed chairs in the lodge and . . . well, I could say porridge but I’d be fibbing. Nothing so mundane greeted us at 6:30 p.m. Our welcoming dinner was a feast of silky pork tenderloin (drizzled with a sweet berry sauce), stuffed grilled peppers, a yam bake, new potatoes and a fresh mixed green salad followed by a lemon torte swimming in a raspberry sauce.
The quality of food has always been high at Skoki with homemade breads a given and hearty breakfasts of poached eggs wrapped in bacon, fluffy French Toast, homemade granola and a hot oatmeal/berry pie (and that was just one brekkie!).
When next you’re there poke your head into the cozy kitchen and take note: All these culinary wonders are whipped up with no running water (every day the staff lugs 12-20 buckets of water out of a creek, 350 yards away) and no electricity, just solar panelled or generator run appliances, “which take much longer due to the elevation,” explained Fraser McGurk, an artist in Canmore who doubled as head cookie this weekend. In fact the recipe for the lemon cake called for 35 minutes of baking time—“it actually took 90 minutes,” said Fraser, “and less moisture.”
A Timepiece
With boots off, a glass of wine in hand (you can now buy wine at Skoki eliminating the need to carry it in) and a place near the great stone fireplace you realize this is the real thing. While $750,000 worth of upgrades have been recently added to this national historic site, the massive logs that make the walls and floorboards are still the originals that were felled and carted around this valley by horses (just as the food and supplies are still hauled in during the summer).
The jagged stones that make the fireplace may have been dismantled during the upgrade but each was carefully placed back into its rightful home. The early evening ritual of lighting dozens of candles and oil lamps are likely what took place during Rummel’s time; the two odourless outhouses still have remarkable cross-valley views; the wash-up system is still a pitcher and basin; the dozens of peaks and trails and high alpine lakes are the same ones that so many Rocky Mountain explorers happened upon.
Granted Skoki co-manager, Leo Mitzel, hasn’t been knocked out by a leg of beef and now makes the winter journey via snowmobile. “But Skoki still gives people what it always has . . . a sense of perspective,” said Mitzel, who runs the lodge with his wife, Katie. “Maybe it’s the simplicity of it all or the fact it’s surrounded by nature but I think it’s a place where you can make sense of things.”
Plus, adds the man who has spent most of his 39 years working with horses, “certain types of travellers seek challenges and want to accomplish things . . . when you’re standing on top of Deception Pass you get to take credit for that.”
Bragging Rights
I was reminded of that later when 10 of us adults gathered around the candlelit dining room table to swap stories about, well . . . travels and life and kids and art. They weren’t bragging rights (well, maybe they were) but that’s when something inside of me twitched, like some primordial memory. Time at Skoki is one of those great equalizers where folks from all socio-economic backgrounds somehow, astonishingly, find common terrain which always makes me wonder if visits here are more than happenstance.
I'm not saying that any of this is so. I'm just saying that this is how I always feel. The other thought that struck me is that the lodge is secondary. It’s wonderful and exquisitely rustic (perfected by the fact that all you have to lug in is your own carcass) but as cliché as this might sound, it’s the trip that is so splendid.
Two days later, when again we found ourselves on Deception Pass (this time in eye wringing early morning sunshine) I looked back down the valley in search of the lodge knowing I wouldn’t see it but trying nevertheless. That’s when I saw our children doing the same and realized like me, you could never spend enough time here, that none of us, child or adult, could ever outgrow Skoki.
That trip taught us everything we were supposed to learn, the stamina required to break trail, the frugality of space that dictates which things you carry, the sheer joy of effort.
Ditto for the fact that both kids just whooped and yelped all the way back to the ski resort, happy to follow a well broken trail and delirious after a breakfast of . . . you guessed it. Jujubes.
Other lodges
Other backcountry lodges in the Canadian Rockies:
