Every summer, thirsty hikers make the 19km roundtrip to visit two century-old teahouses for a brew in the mountains above Lake Louise.
It was the middle of August 2023 when Laura Karan, a 20-something civil servant from London, first headed out into the mountains alone. She was walking on a winding, tree-lined trail, moving beneath the corridor of fir, larch and spruce, every so often getting a glimpse of the dazzling emerald-blue waters of Lake Louise an ever-increasing number of metres below. As an outdoors newbie hiking alone on the trail, rather than enjoying the scenery she was instead trying hard not to think about the 65 grizzly bears that call Banff National Park home.
“I was scared,” Karan confessed when I met her six weeks later at Lake Agnes Teahouse, 2,135m above sea level in the Canadian Rockies. “I’d heard a lot of stories about bear encounters and was convinced I’d see one.”
Now, however, it’s not grizzlies that’s constantly on her mind, but tea – and lots of it. She works at the aforementioned teahouse, which sits the edge of the lake that inspired its name. It can only be reached after a one-hour bus ride from Banff to the shores of Lake Louise, followed by a 4km uphill hike amid towering spruce forest, interspersed with limestone escarpments – making it a beautiful but strenuous and committed commute.
But this particularly protracted journey to work is nothing new. This stone and wooden cafe – or at least a version of it – has been here since 1901, serving hot beverages to hikers in the wilderness.
Ever since Canada’s transcontinental railway was completed in 1885 and Victorian travellers begun to visit the newly accessible wilderness of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, the need to ply “explorers” with tea soon followed. By 1905, the Canadian Pacific Rail (CPR) company had built Lake Agnes Teahouse – then the only one in the park – as a seasonal offering (June to October) due to avalanche risk in winter.
Though opened initially as a passing stop for the intrepid hikers who wanted to reach the mountains beyond, it quickly became a destination in its own right, and today Karan is just one of several employees who undertakes the sometimes thrice-weekly walk to work on what is affectionately known as the Tea House Hikes.
And it’s not just workers. As an 8km round-trip (you can’t stay overnight), it’s an accessible day’s adventure achievable by most, and tourists now come in droves to see if they are up to the challenge – and sample one of the 100 loose leaf teas available.
“We get all walks of people,” said Karan. “From 90-year-olds who worked in Lake Louise as teens and have had it on their bucket list since then, to people who’ve just got married and want to experience it, families, novice hikers and experienced walkers too. We see it all.”
Though it’s been rebuilt and patched up over the years, the one thing that’s not changed – other than the serving of refreshments – is the lack of electricity, running water or internet. Yet Karan is just one of 13 workers who come to work here for minimum wage every summer.
“It’s not easy,” she told me as she stood over the propane-powered, eight-ring stove that always seemed to be boiling water (gravity-fed from the namesake lake) in the small, rectangular kitchen. It’s estimated that they make between 250-300 cups of tea on an average day, and have an impressive menu of cakes, sandwiches and baked goods. “Baking starts 04.30 to 04.45, then none of us finish until the last dish is handwashed at 20:00.”
In between those 15 hours, a Lake Agnes worker will be baking more bread and cakes, making sandwiches and soup, serving tea, cleaning tables and helping with any maintenance issues. The two times (sometimes more depending on scheduled shifts) a week they head down into Banff for a couple of days off, they leave carrying two bags of rubbish and recycling. And no one comes back empty-handed either; they must bring up the day’s requirement of fresh produce, no matter how heavy.
“It was hard at first, but now it’s fun,” said Karan. “It’s a good way to get to work – definitely better than getting the Tube.”
Karan, along with her 12 co-workers – aged 18-28, mainly college students who found the job through word of mouth – all share two tiny original staff cabins with a wood-burning stove for heat and no electricity, phone chargers or showers in sight. Yet they all have similar responses.
Shannon from Ontario, who had just completed her sixth summer at the teahouse (like her older sister did before her) described the teahouse as “home”. “It’s a very special environment to me. There’s a magic up here,” she said.
And Caitlin from Alberta, on her second summer here, remarked: “It makes me have a new appreciation for waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom at home!” That’s because the toilets here are outhouses, a few minutes stroll from their cabins.
In 1973, an equally as wide-eyed youngster named Cynthia Magee hiked this same trail up to Lake Agnes to work in this teahouse. She immediately fell in love with it too, and seven years later, bought it from CPR.
“She had to rebuild it almost immediately,” explained her daughter and the teahouse’s now-manager Joanne Magee, who runs it for her septuagenarian mum. “I remember carrying up 2x4s as a little kid,” she laughed while we sat at one of the original windows her mum managed to save, drinking maple leaf tea. “We’d carry them up on our backs. Then there was the daily school run… “
A single parent to Joanne, Cynthia had to walk her daughter down to Lake Louise and see her safely on the school bus, before walking back up and working all day, then walking back down to pick her up again.
“Sometimes I tried to stay with friends to avoid the walk,” recalled Joanne, as steam rose in the cool air, surrounding her face like the edges of an old polaroid photograph, “but mum would come down and march me back home.”
Joanne has now run things for 20 years, bringing up her three kids every summer from their home in Banff – as well as her husband Pierre Luc.
“I married into this in 2009,” Pierre Luc said with a smile, as he showed me the solar panels that power the lights needed for early morning baking in the propane oven and a single mobile phone for emergency use.
“Everything can and often goes wrong here – so I have to be a man of all trades. On a bad week I may have to do the walk four or five times – especially if something needs fixing and I can’t get a part.”
The last place he showed me was their family quarters: a tiny cubby up a ladder above the main room, containing three beds surrounded by storage boxes. It certainly wasn’t a family summer house that most Canadian’s would dream of, but “it’s home”, he said.
When I left to a chorus of goodbyes, bundled off with the soup of the day (carrot and chilli) and a basket of freshly made treats – including the teahouse’s most popular “Daily Square” (a mountain bar made with oats, cookies, dried fruit and chocolate), it did feel very much like leaving family behind.
If Lake Agnes Teahouse is domestic bliss, then the next stop on my tea-drinking mission was a spiritual retreat.
Situated among the mountainous amphitheatre to the west of Agnes, up a steep trail over a rocky promontory called The Beehive, is the second of only two teahouses to be built in the entire park. A visit to the Plain of 6 Glaciers Teahouse added another 7km to my day’s walk (the complete “Tea House Hike” is a 19km loop that starts and ends at Lake Louise). But they were worth every step. Views extend down the entire length of Lake Louise, over into the ice fields from which it gets its name, and through pristine forest far from the tourist buses.
The teahouse is edged with red-painted beams and festooned with Nepalese prayer flags (a gift from a Sherpa), and the vibe here was as relaxed as the current manager Nigel Weir’s voice when he welcomed me in. Built in 1927 (also by the CPR), this teahouse was bought by the Kimball family in 1959. Their daughter, Susanna, who grew up on these slopes, still runs the place today, though she was away getting urgent supplies from town the day I visited.
Once more I found myself supping tea listening to tales of supplies being carted in by horseback, which has been replaced by just one helicopter delivery at the start of the season and supplemented by staff’s backpacks.
“The main difference between the teahouses, I think, is that we are wilder here,” said Weir, as a Clark’s nutcracker bird flew through the balcony poles and tried to grab some rather delicious chilli that was on my fork. “It takes about twice as long to get here [as Agnes] and there’s not many trails that go further so, we get a lot of adventurers, glacier hikers and mountaineers, rather than curious tourists.”
While I ate, one such climber passed by with a backpack full of ropes, while a porcupine nuzzled the nearby ground looking for food.
The other staff here were generally a bit older than the ones I met at Agnes. In the kitchen I found Katy from Alberta, who “hiked up here one day and found this gig” – this was her second summer, after which she plans to travel to South America before coming back next season. Also there was Pam from Ontario, whose other job is as a forest fire fighter.
With just 10 days left till the end of the season, and limited staff left, the commute here from Banff is even more punishing, with a daily 7.5km run for perishables after the bus to Lake Louise. Yet Weir wouldn’t change it.
“It’s like that classic story that everyone’s dad seems to have: ‘When I used to walk to school it was uphill, both ways, through the snow, with one shoe on’,” he explained. “Except, now I actually have that story myself. One day I can tell my kids I had to walk to work uphill, both ways, through the snow with one shoe on… carrying cheese and lettuce.”
Slowcomotion is a BBC Travel series that celebrates slow, self-propelled travel and invites readers to get outside and reconnect with the world in a safe and sustainable way.