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 in its Pelican case wedged between my knees and my heart in my throat four times now, three of them to Purcell across a summer and two winters, and once to Mistaya in summer. 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, and I will 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, and 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 helicopter is the least important part of the week. It is forty minutes of noise buying you seven days of silence.

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

Meadow first, which is why I recommend it

The terrain starts gentle in every direction, which makes this the one I send people to for a first backcountry trip. You can learn to skin and to snowshoe without committing to anything you cannot reverse.

It rises to forty-degree lines and multi-summit days of up to two thousand vertical metres for parties who want them, and both guided and self-guided weeks run, which is rare in this category. The snow here comes deep and stays cold.

Green aurora over the snow-covered lodge and surrounding ridges at night
Aerial view at dusk of the lodge and its separate chalet on open meadow, ranges receding behind

Alone on the bench

Some nights the sky joins in. There is nothing on the horizon to compete with it and no road to bring headlights.

The lodge and its chalet from above, with the ranges stacked behind. The nearest building of any kind is a long way outside this frame.

A line of ski tourers crossing a wide snowfield below a wall of snow-covered peaks, seen from the air
A guided line on the bench in winter, from the air. The terrain starts gentle in every direction, which is the point.
Lodge lounge with a wood fire, sofas, board games and a timber-beamed ceiling

Changeover day

The lounge, where the board-game shelf sees serious and occasionally bitter use. A week of weather days will do that to a group.

Fifteen minutes from Golden, luggage by the skid. Everything that will be eaten, drunk or worn for the next seven days arrives on the same flight you do.

Guests unloading from a red and white helicopter on the meadow landing pad The lodge seen at a distance, standing alone in green alpine meadow above treeline with ranges beyond Late sun raking across a broad alpine ridge of meadow and scree, mountains fading into haze

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
Hikers climbing a snow-patched alpine slope above Purcell Mountain Lodge, Mount Sir Donald sharp on the skyline behind them

The climb

Kneegrinder, with Sir Donald behind

The way up to the ridge walk, and the name the lodge gives it is accurate. Mount Sir Donald keeps you company the whole way.

Late sun on scree is the reason I keep going back with a longer lens than I need.

Field note
Broad scree-and-meadow ridge falling away to hazy blue ranges
The lodge glowing under a dense star field with the Milky Way overhead
The Milky Way rising over a dark alpine meadow with a distant peak on the horizon

No light pollution for a hundred kilometres

And it shows. The lodge is the only lit thing in the frame and it is running on its own power.

I stopped counting satellites at thirty. If you have never seen the Milky Way properly, this is a cheaper way to fix that than most.

My Purcell film, shot across a summer week. The 360 degree 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.

Glaciated ground starts at the deck. There is no warm-up valley and no gentle first day unless you decide to make one.

Three hikers standing on a footbridge over a rushing glacial creek, snow-covered peaks at the valley head
Aerial view of the lodge above a turquoise alpine tarn, with glaciated Rocky Mountain peaks beyond

The daily commute

The footbridge below the lodge is the way out to the high routes, and it is crossed twice a day by everybody staying.

The lodge shares its basin with a private tarn. That is the whole neighbourhood: one building, one lake, and the ice above it.

Glaciated peaks rising above two turquoise meltwater tarns and patches of late-season snow
Sunbeams breaking over jagged peaks and pouring down a forested valley at sunset

Some nights the sky joins in

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

Simple, warm, pointed at the mountains

Rooms are pine and bunks and a duvet, with the window doing everything a picture would be doing somewhere else.

The tarn from directly above. The trail around it is the warm-down lap, and on a rest day it is the whole itinerary.

The lodge lit from within beneath a dense field of stars, framed by tall spruce
The Milky Way arching over silhouetted spruce and a distant snow-covered peak

The Mistaya film. Their 360 degree tour is here.

Side by side

Purcell vs Mistaya, on the record

Season, sleeps, access, rate band and guest rating for both, with the inferred numbers flagged, and the verdicts from this piece set against each other.

Read the comparison

Choosing

Take Purcell if the party is mixed in abilities, ages or appetites, or if self-guiding matters to you. Take Mistaya if the word “glacier” raises your pulse, and if published pricing earns your trust the way it earns mine.

Both fill their peak weeks far ahead, and 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.