Mistaya Lodge
Treading lightly Mistaya Lodge makes every step count
Tucked in a sub-alpine basin, rubbing shoulders with two national parks, it’s only natural that Cindy Galligan and Dave Birnie, owners of Mistaya Lodge, leave as small a footprint as possible on their fragile home. Sitting at 6,700 feet (2,040 metres) in the Wildcat Creek drainage, north east of Golden, the cozy lodge caters to hikers and backcountry skiers looking to explore the west side of the Rocky Mountains, just west of Banff National Park and north of Yoho National Park.
“It’s a sensitive area and we do our best to be footprint free,” says Birnie.
Instead of building an extensive trail system for the lodge’s summer hiking program Mistaya opted for low impact “routes”. Ten kilometers of trails snake through the sub-alpine forest away from the lodge but once at treeline the worked in track gives way to wide-open country and single file hiking gives way to low impact techniques. “We don’t want to scar the open alpine landscape with a trail, so we ask everyone to spread out,” Birnie explains. The technique may seem counterintuitive, but in the small groups that typify a Mistaya holiday – the lodge maxes out at 14 – spreading out disperses impact to a level that fragile alpine plants can handle, ensuring the only impact is a few footprints not multiple trails cutting across a basin.
With extensive alpine meadows, seven glaciers, many lakes and tarns, numerous ridges and accessible 10,000 foot summits, the 10 kilometres of official trails are just a warm up to the real hiking. In winter all the same terrain is covered in Rocky Mountain powder.
At the end of the day, summer or winter, guests return to a lodge powered by clean renewable energy from a micro hydro generator installed in the early 90s and a solar panel that has been part of the lodge’s power system since it opened in 1988.
Garbage, recyclables and compost are flown out by helicopter to Golden to be disposed of properly. “All the compost is sent out to our family and friends to put in their gardens,” says Birnie. During the summer a green house outside the lodge produces lettuce for salads and sandwiches.
Overall the impact of a backcountry lodge holiday is pretty minimal, except for one element: the helicopter trips. Mistaya is inaccessible except by helicopter, so there’s no way of eliminating this element, but Birnie and Galligan are constantly working to minimize flight times and thus carbon emissions. The first flight of a changeover leaves from Golden, but the subsequent flights are staged as close to the lodge as possible.
There's always more that can be done. Whether it's with the creek protection society or his own company, Fandrich will always be working to preserve B.C.'s rivers and wilderness.
Website: www.mistayalodge.com
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