A new thermal bathing spa opens at Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise | Canada Voices

A new thermal bathing house overlooking one of Canada’s most famous lakes opens today at Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise in Banff National Park.

Basin Glacial Waters is a 19,000-square-foot spa that focuses on steam, heat and water. It’s been in development for two decades, taken five years of planning with Parks Canada for permit approvals and is part of the historic hotel’s $130-million renovations.

Guests can stare out at the glacial wonder of Lake Louise – not jostling with tourists at the water’s edge, but from an infinity thermal pool set back from the fray. The pool’s edge seems to blend into the vista before you, and it can feel like you’ve become part of that legendary view, bobbing in the lake’s turquoise waters dotted with red canoes, with jagged mountain peaks looming overhead and the icy tongue of Victoria glacier glittering in the distance.

Basin Glacial Waters spa, named to reflect the famous lake’s geological formation, is embedded into the landscape. It’s built under the hotel’s historic Painter wing. With indoor/outdoor spaces, the focus is on hot and cold pools, Kneipp pebble walks, relaxation rooms with salt walls and hot stone slabs, ice and aufguss. The spa is open year-round, and its ancient water-based rituals are sluiced with luxury inside a sleek, modern space.

Hotel guests can book a three-hour, self-directed turn through its hydrotherapy circuits, and fewer than 100 guests will be allowed in at a time. There are no treatments here (the hotel’s traditional spa is still open for that). Basin is the place to plunge, sweat, soak and find what the Finns call “löyly.”

The term refers to a sauna’s steam but also the vibe. The spa will have quiet rooms and phones are strongly discouraged but there will be no shushing at Basin.

“Sauna is so social and, I would add, spiritual,” Basin consultant Lasse Eriksen explains. The Norwegian is a professional saunamaster and has spent years studying bathing cultures around the world. He is on the development team of Farris Bad spa near Oslo, on the boards of the International Sauna Association and the Norwegian Sauna Association. He’s vice president of worldwide Aufguss WM and was hired by Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise to ensure the contrast bathing (or “sweat bathing” as he likes to call it) is authentic and meaningful, not gimmicky.

Talk to him long enough and you’ll hear how it’s not just the health benefits that make sweat bathing important; he believes sauna makes people kinder and more human. “Something happens inside the steam bath,” he says. “It is difficult to keep anger inside.”

Eriksen is especially passionate about aufguss, a sauna ritual that encourages people to spend longer in the heat using music, storytelling and aromatherapy (snowballs drizzled with essential oils are melted on hot stones). As the room warms up, the aufgussmeister waves a towel with balletic or frenzied precision. Sweating too much? Cooler, 40-degree-Celsius air is pushed up from the bottom of the sauna. When they gauge guests are ready for more, then hotter, 80-degree air is waved their way. “The longer you stay in the steam bath, the more present you become,” Eriksen says.

Basin’s aufguss sauna is a low-ceilinged, dark wood space that seats around 20, with the bright blues of Lake Louise revealed through an arched window cut into one wall. Its aufgussmeisters are being trained by two of Norway’s aufguss champions: Iver Hjelbak-Eriksen (Lasse’s son) and Hannah Linnea Haugen.

The ritual is catching on in Canada and Eriksen helped judge the country’s first national championships earlier this summer at Thermea Spa Village in Whitby, Ont. Canada’s aufguss scene is growing quickly, he said, adding he was thrilled to see the crowds waiting to enter the Whitby spa’s performance sauna (which seats 90).

While Basin requires guests wear bathing suits, it otherwise doesn’t follow “a Puritan approach,” notes Emma Darby, Fairmont’s vice president of Spa and Wellness.

“Everybody’s wellness is different, you get to experience it your way,” she says.

That’s why Basin’s hydrotherapy is spiked with indulgence. Spa guests can order cocktails or a glass of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs Champagne (which is only poured here, not in the hotel). At the centre of the spa, floor-to-ceiling windows flood natural light into its lounge space/eatery, where guests can linger over healthy plates created by Chateau Lake Louise’s executive chef Nicholas Issel. Expect light bites such as seaweed salad, Iberico ham and cheese in crispy shells, delicately sliced vegetables and dried, local fruits. Nourishing bone broth is poured from ceramic tea pots and tomato-water shots offer a quick antioxidant hit. Sweet teeth are satisfied with warm pots of drinking chocolate, two-bite banana-bread cream cakes or passionfruit tarts, among other seasonal treats.

Darby notes the new spa is a reaction to travellers’ needs.

“It used to be ‘I need a gym,’ but that’s not enough for most people today. People want padel courts, they want thermal bathing, … they want protein shakes − just as a standard offering, so they can continue their everyday experience,” she says, adding that Fairmont is moving toward more hydrotherapy wellness in its hotels. Chateau Lake Louise is the first; the next bathing house is planned for its new property in Vietnam.

History buffs will note a water-based spa in Banff National Park is hardly a new idea. Canada’s first national park was created in 1885 to settle an ownership dispute over the mineral springs on the lower slopes of Sulphur Mountain. The hot pools were used by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years, and when “discovered” by two railway workers, their healing powers became a selling point for the park and Banff Springs Hotel, which piped in the water. (The Banff Upper Hot Springs – now run by Parks Canada – are still in use but currently closed for repair until later this year.)

When it came to planning the new spa at Chateau Lake Louise, Stoney Nakoda First Nations were invited to public consultations held by Parks Canada. Tracy Lowe, the hotel’s general manager, noted in an interview that while construction was delayed and Basin’s opening date was pushed back many times, it helped ensure environmental protections were maintained. “It was about monitoring the water,” Lowe said. “Lake Louise is all about water.”

And while local ground squirrels initially lost their homes during construction, a visit just before the spa’s opening date revealed the rodents had returned to the outdoor landscape in adorable numbers.

Basin Glacial Waters is open from sunrise to sunset and can only be booked by hotel guests. Three-hour access is $275. thebasin.com

The writer was a guest of Chateau Lake Louise. It did not review or approve the story before publication.