The Lake Louise Ski Resort is, as of 2022, the largest ski area in the Canadian Rockies, spanning over 4,000 acres of skiable terrain and 3,250 feet of vertical. The ski area has the majority of its runs on the ‘front’ (facing Lake Louise) and the ‘back’ (behind the ridge) sides of Whitehorn Mountain, though there are some runs which cover the lower part of Lipalian Mountain. The resort has 164 marked ski runs, and the longest run goes for 8 km. The ski area is located across the TransCanada highway from the village of Lake Louise; a short, 2.6 km drive from the TransCanada highway exit up Whitehorn Drive is required to reach the parking lot and the primary village area of the ski area.
I skied at the Lake Louise ski resort several times when I was in high school, however I had not been back in the past 15 years and on my first day there I was mostly unfamiliar with the mountain. It was an incredibly cold (-23° C) day to start my season at Louise, but the cold kept the crowds away and I was able to keep warm exploring runs across all the different lifts.
I ended up skiing the Lake Louise resort 7 times during my break, and was blown away by how great the views were and how great the skiing was, even when there wasn’t fresh snow. There were a large number of challenging double black diamond runs at Louise, with a lot of steep gullies covered in moguls as well as a few runs through the glades. It definitely had some of the most challenging skiing I’ve done, and the challenging runs at Louise are noticeably longer than they are at Sunshine. One goal I set for myself was to ski all the black, double black and blue runs on the hill, and while I wasn’t able to accomplish that goal, I covered a lot of ground.
I quite enjoyed skiing the Alphabet gullies on the back of Whitehorn Mountain as they were quite challenging runs, and the runs down the Paradise Bowl were also fantastic. The shorter double blacks off the Top of the World chair were not bad, but many of them were too short to be challenging runs.
In addition to the skiing within the resort there are some options to ski out of bounds - however I chose not to partake on this trip.
