There is a moment, about twelve minutes out of Golden, when the clearcuts stop and the country goes vertical, and whatever you were thinking about in the staging lot does not survive it. I have made that flight with a drone case wedged between my knees and my heart in my throat, twice — once to each of the two lodges this piece is about — and the landing is the same both times: the machine banks, a roofline appears in country that has no business containing architecture, and you are delivered into a week that runs on snow, weather and appetite rather than any clock you brought with you.

Purcell Mountain Lodge and Mistaya Lodge both stage out of Golden, both run on fixed changeover flights with all meals and guiding included, and both close in the shoulder seasons when neither snow nor trail can be relied on. Choosing between them is really a choice between kinds of country. I shot a film at each; I’ll try to be fair to both.

Purcell: the meadow

Purcell is the sociable one — three storeys of timber on an alpine bench at the edge of Glacier National Park, ten rooms upstairs, a separate two-bedroom chalet that can be taken self-catered.

Purcell Mountain Lodge, a three-storey timber lodge with a blue roof, lit at sunset with jagged peaks behind

Purcell at last light. I flew the drone until my fingers stopped working.

The lodge in deep winter snow below a long ridge, under pink and violet dawn cloud

Winter dawn from the ridge above the lodge — the snow here comes deep and stays cold.

Its terrain is meadow first, which is exactly why I recommend it to people making their first backcountry trip: gentle slopes in every direction for learning to skin and snowshoe, rising to forty-degree lines and multi-summit days measuring up to two thousand vertical metres for parties who want them. Guided and self-guided weeks both run, which is rare in this category.

Green aurora over the snow-covered lodge and surrounding ridges at night

Some nights the sky joins in.

Aerial view at dusk of the lodge and its separate chalet on open meadow, ranges receding behind

The lodge and chalet from above — alone on the bench, ranges stacked behind.

Lodge lounge with a wood fire, sofas, board games and a timber-beamed ceiling

The lounge. The board-game shelf sees serious, occasionally bitter, use.

Guests unloading from a red and white helicopter on the meadow landing pad

Changeover day: fifteen minutes from Golden, luggage by the skid.

In summer the meadows do the work the snow does in winter. I spent an evening on the ridge with hikers strung out along the crest and mountains dissolving into haze behind them, and it is the closest thing to walking on a topographic map I know.

A line of hikers strung along a high ridge above a snow cornice, glaciated peaks behind

The ridge walk above the lodge, cornice still holding in July.

The lodge seen at a distance, standing alone in green alpine meadow above treeline with ranges beyond

Summer state: green meadow, no roads, no neighbours.

Broad scree-and-meadow ridge falling away to hazy blue ranges

The country you have to yourself.

Late sun raking across a broad alpine ridge of meadow and scree, mountains fading into haze

Raking light on the high traverse.

The lodge glowing under a dense star field with the Milky Way overhead

No light pollution for a hundred kilometres, and it shows.

The Milky Way rising over a dark alpine meadow with a distant peak on the horizon

I stopped counting satellites at thirty.

My Purcell film, shot across a summer week. The 360° tour is here.

Mistaya: the glacier

Mistaya is the alpinist’s version — fourteen guests in a red-roofed lodge at 2,040 metres in the Wildcat Creek basin, with glaciated ground straight off the deck and a sauna for what the glaciated ground does to you.

Mistaya Lodge, a timber lodge with a red roof and wraparound deck, standing in alpine meadow ringed by spruce

Mistaya from the meadow. Everything here arrived by longline.

Three hikers standing on a footbridge over a rushing glacial creek, snow-covered peaks at the valley head

The footbridge below the lodge — the daily commute to the high routes.

Aerial view of the lodge above a turquoise alpine tarn, with glaciated Rocky Mountain peaks beyond

The neighbourhood: the lodge shares its basin with a private tarn.

Glaciated peaks rising above two turquoise meltwater tarns and patches of late-season snow

The upper basin in August — meltwater the colour of nothing else.

Sunbeams breaking over jagged peaks and pouring down a forested valley at sunset

Evening light finding its way down-valley.

The lodge publishes every price — a seven-day summer week is $3,940, the deep-winter week $4,500 — which in a category fond of “enquire for rates” reads almost like a manifesto. Inside it is warmer than it has any right to be: a long dining table under timber beams, a lounge wall of glass facing the peaks, and pine rooms where the window frames do the artwork’s job.

Open-plan timber lounge and dining room with large windows framing snow-capped peaks

The main room. The windows won the argument with the walls.

Pine-panelled bedroom with a striped duvet, bunk bed and a window framing a glaciated peak

Rooms are simple, warm, and pointed at the mountains.

The lodge lit from within beneath a dense field of stars, framed by tall spruce

Night at 2,040 metres.

The Milky Way arching over silhouetted spruce and a distant snow-covered peak

The other reason to be here in the dark.

Overhead aerial view of a turquoise alpine tarn ringed by conifer forest and a hiking trail

The tarn from directly above — the trail around it is the warm-down lap.

The Mistaya film. Their 360° tour is here.

The helicopter is the least important part of the week. It is forty minutes of noise buying you seven days of silence.

Choosing

Take Purcell if the party is mixed — abilities, ages, appetites — or if self-guiding matters to you. Take Mistaya if the word “glacier” raises your pulse and published pricing earns your trust the way it earns mine. Both fill their peak weeks far ahead; returning groups treat their dates as heirlooms. Book the changeover day, train your legs, and let the machine do the only rushing of the week.

Purcell Mountain Lodge → · Mistaya Lodge →