Banff was first sold as a travel destination on the strength of its
appeal as a summer resort area. Back at the turn of the 20th
century, Sir William Cornelius Van Horne was in charge of
connecting
British Columbia to the rest of
Canada by rail. Sensing
he was onto a good thing in Banff, he built two luxury hotels along
the Canadian Pacific Railway route - the Banff Springs Hotel and
the Chateau
Lake Louise.
Since the town pretty much shuts down during the winter, no one
bothered to capitalize on the sky-scraping peaks and abundant
snowfall. After all, Canadians spend most of their time trying to
escape the cold, not embrace it. During the winter months, the
hotels sat eerily empty with a skeleton staff, like the grand old
Overlook hotel
Jack Nicholson's character took care of in The
Shining.
"When I first arrived at Chateau Lake Louise [a few years ago],
you'd spend the evening shifts sitting in an empty lobby just
waiting for somebody to come by," says head concierge Jacinta
Adams, an Australian who was attracted to Banff by the natural
beauty of the area. "The staff would pounce on guests who made
their way through the lobby, offering to help them in any way
possible."
Aspen, meanwhile, had no doubt about the role of its snowy slopes.
By the time the first chairlift was installed in Banff during the
1940s, Aspen had already staked its claim as the Rocky Mountain
winter destination for the beautiful people.
While Banff may still lack some of the glitz and glamour of the
Colorado ski resorts, it's not missing anything in the natural
beauty department. Standing at the blustery peak of Lake Louise,
8,765 feet above sea level, with a view of what is possibly the
world's most photographed lake, it's not hard to see why the resort
was ranked number one for scenery in
North America by SKI magazine
last year.