Nobody plans the night before. The trip is the helicopter, the ski week, the canoe on the Bow; the night before is whatever was left on the booking site. I have spent a fair amount of time in the towns those trips start from with a camera, and in 2024 Basecamp Resorts asked me to photograph, film and build the 360 tours for their properties in Canmore and Revelstoke. Five of them are on this record now, as gateway stays: not experiences, the beds on the way to them.
Canmore is an hour and a quarter from Calgary airport and outside the park gate, which is why it has kitchens and breweries where Banff has hotels. Four of the five are here.
The rooftop with the Three Sisters in it
Basecamp Resorts Canmore is a courtyard of gabled townhouse suites on Bow Valley Trail, and the thing everyone remembers is the round window. The bedrooms in the mountain-facing units have a porthole the size of a dining table with Ha Ling Peak in it, and the marketing film I shot ends on a guest sitting in one with her coffee because there was no better last frame available.
The window
It is a bedroom window, which matters: you wake up in it. Ask for a mountain-facing unit when you book; the courtyard-facing bedrooms look at the walkway, which is pleasant and not the same thing.
The suites run from a micro studio to a six-bedroom for sixteen, every one with a full kitchen and outdoor seating except the micros. Two families in the six-bedroom is one rate, not six rooms.
Inside the townhouses
The one- and two-bedroom patios open onto the main walkway; the larger units have semi-private upstairs decks with summer planting. The three-bedroom has a dining table under copper pendants that seats the whole unit.
Main Street is fifteen minutes on foot along Bow Valley Trail. Basecamp Lodge is next door, so a party split between suites and hotel rooms can be on the same block.
The lodge with the fireplace
Basecamp Lodge Canmore is the hotel of the group: king and double queen rooms with timber walls, several with gas fireplaces, one micro suite with a kitchen, and a great room under a CANADA sign that is open around the clock with coffee on. It is next door to the Resorts, and it is the one I would pick for a single night between drives.
The great room
Red armchairs, a stone fireplace, tall windows on the peaks, tables to work at. It is open 24 hours, which is the difference between a lodge and a motel: at six in the morning before a drive to the Icefields there is somewhere to sit with a coffee that is not the car.
The lodge lists work retreats among its uses and I can see why; the wifi and the room are the office.
The apartments a block from Main Street
Basecamp Suites Canmore is a dark-clad apartment building at 721 10th Street, a block off Main Street, and it is the one to book for a week: full kitchens, in-unit laundry, long dining tables, a rooftop hot tub, covered parking under the suites, and a lawn with a fire table out the back. The three-bedroom with bunk sleeps ten.
The week base
A washing machine is not glamorous, but on day four of a ski week it is the amenity. Every apartment has one, with a full-sized kitchen and two bathrooms in the two- and three-bedroom units.
Everything downtown is within ten minutes on foot, so the car is for the trailheads rather than for dinner.
Cook, then sleep
The barbecues are shared and first come first served; the rooftop tub is nine to ten with change rooms. The bedrooms have the leather headboards and the brass lamps the whole group uses, and blackout that works.
Lamphouse and the Suites share a phone number and a front desk team; if one is full the other is a three-minute walk.
The motel by the creek
Lamphouse Hotel Canmore is Basecamp’s modern motel in the middle of downtown, at 610 8 Street beside Policeman’s Creek. The 360 tour opens on the view from across the pond, because in October the aspens around it go gold and the Rundle range sits behind the roof, and I could not find a better first frame. Two minutes on foot to Main Street; a footbridge to the pond.
Downtown, on purpose
This is the one for people who want to walk to dinner. King and double queen rooms, some with the mountains in the window, a queen suite, a king set aside for dogs, and the Lamphouse Apartment for ten with two and a half bathrooms.
An outdoor hot tub sits by the creek behind a cedar screen, nine to ten daily; the towels are in the room and there are no change rooms, so go dressed for it.
Then the Columbia
The suites above the river
Basecamp Resorts Revelstoke is four and a half hours west of Canmore over Rogers Pass, and it is a different proposition: a row of modern suites on a forested bluff above the Columbia, five minutes from a town that exists for the longest lift-served vertical on the continent and the heli-skiing in the Columbias. I flew the drone over it at dusk with every window lit and that frame is on the listing.
On the bluff
Micro studio to six-bedroom, two to fourteen, every unit with a full kitchen and the bigger ones with two or three bathrooms. The one-bedrooms and the three-bedroom bunk suites have private patios facing the river.
It is on Highway 23 North, which is the road to the resort; in winter the front desk hands out complimentary shuttle vouchers and the shuttle picks up in the parking lot.
The Columbias, from the door
Revelstoke is the base for Rogers Pass ski touring, the resort, the cat and heli operations and, in summer, the bike park and the river. None of those are on this record yet; the bed is, because I have photographed every room of it and can show you which one to ask for.
Six hours from Vancouver, two and a half from Kelowna, four and a half from Calgary. The Trans-Canada through Rogers Pass closes for avalanche control some winter days; build a buffer.
Which one, then
For a single night before a drive, the Lodge. For a week with a kitchen and a washing machine, the Suites. For the window and the rooftop, the Resorts. For walking to dinner, Lamphouse. For the Columbias, Revelstoke, and it is the only one of the five that is not in Canmore.
None of them publish a rate; the price is set by the date in the booking engine on each property page, with a flexible rate you can cancel free until 72 hours before arrival and a lower non-refundable one. Check-in is four, check-out eleven, a $250 security deposit per unit goes on the card at arrival and comes back after, one parking space per booking is the aim, and dogs are two at most, by notice, in the units that take them. The Ledger on each page has the rest.
