Destination spotlight: Bobbie Burns Lodge

In today’s fast-paced world, true wilderness is hard to find.

Yet part of the character of the Columbia Mountain ranges is that isolation and awe converge—especially 53 kilometres up the remote mountain valley in the Purcell Range that is home turf to our recently renovated Bobbie Burns Lodge.

Built in 1980 as one of the original CMH lodges, the Bobbie Burns is a favourite of longtime CMH guests not only due to its vast reserves of terrain but also its intimate European feel and the peaceful, poetic isolation of the Purcell Mountains.

A spectacular and dramatic sub-range of the Columbia Mountains and a parent to the famous Bugaboos, the majority of peaks along the 300-mile spine tower above 10,000 feet, many with thousands of feet of vertical relief. Marked by U-shaped, glacially carved valleys, the vast range is stacked with cirques and moraines, spires and arêtes, glaciers and icefields—yet sees few visitors to its backcountry.

With mind-blowing landscapes and peaceful isolation, it’s a location that inspires the mind and fuels the soul like few other places on earth.

In summer, the Burns is adventure central as a luxurious base camp for our two most renowned via ferrata routes—Mt. Nimbus and the Conrad Glacier.

While the heart thumping, bucket-list exposure of Mt. Nimbus and the otherworldly terrain of the Conrad Glacier route are two of the biggest draws at our lodge, many guests find that they are also equally awed by the wilderness isolation and approachable hikes they find in the Purcells. In some ways, it’s the perfect counterbalance to a ferrata day where adrenaline surges.

Amenities abound at this mountain lodge

That contrast exemplifies the Bobbie Burns. As one of our original lodges, the Burns has always been intimate and in line with the original European hut culture thinking of our founders. Yet an extensive redevelopment in 2019 added ten guest rooms, incorporated a games room, updated the common areas and elevated the lodge amenities to those of the most modern lodges in the CMH family. It feels like mountain luxury but it’s not about thread counts and bath products—it’s where you are and who you are with.

The marquee amenity of the lodge is still the outdoor fire pit, which is a huge attraction for urban residents who forget what it’s truly like to see the stars. With no light pollution and a prime spot in the tall Canadian timber, the fire pit is an ideal location for stargazing underneath a truly dark sky—sipping a cocktail and contemplating the cosmos.

Back inside, the classic euro-inspired layout predominates, maintaining a natural, relaxed and unpretentious feel that encourages interaction and conversation. We asked longtime area manager Carl Trescher, now CMH VP of Mountain Operations, to reconcile the contrasts. This is how he broke it down.

Middle of nowhere, poetic solitude

Centrally located in the middle of nowhere, our Bobbie Burns is quite literally at the end of the road. 53 kilometres up a remote logging road with only a trapper, tree farm and hunting outfitter as the only neighbours for a hundred-plus kilometres. Aside from those few humans, the population density in this vast expanse of crown land is nearly nothing. You’re more likely to see signs of the local big brown fauna than to see a trail sign anywhere in the tenure.

“Once you leave that main valley—I would almost consider it a commodity—but it is real wilderness where there’s no sign of any human impact. As soon as you go off on any of the side valleys here, you’re in complete wilderness. It’s like there’s no sign of man,” Carl describes.

“There’s no logging roads, no mining roads—the only way to access it is a helicopter because there’s not even a recreational trail. It’s one of the big draws for me in this area—the spots you take people out hiking and climbing from the lodge. We’re going to a real wilderness area here and there’s no road to come back to civilization on.”

History and hut culture

One of CMH’s first lodges, the Burns was completed in 1980 after one season operating out of the Ruth-Vermont mining camp and three seasons located in ATCO trailers at a down-valley logging camp. Built through sheer force of will and a logistical effort that still astounds, the Bobbie Burns Lodge was a stratospheric upgrade. Yet it was designed to feel both intimate and inviting, a European-style founding ethic this classic still retains even after the recent remodel.

“The Burns is just that traditional kind of family CMH feel—it’s like a traditional European hut culture almost,” Carl says. “You go out and you do your trip in the mountains during the day, and you come back and you have that time to hang out and interact together and eat together.”

“That was one of my jobs is to keep that culture going and intact because it’s very easy to lose and to turn it into a super high-end, white-glove, fine-service kind of resort, but that’s not what our guests necessarily are coming for,” Carl continues.

“They’re coming for the mountain experience first, of course, the hiking and the climbing and the skiing, but then it’s also that interacting with their guides, interacting with the lodge staff and that’s a huge part of the experience for them, a huge part.”

Two of the best via ferratas in Canada

When a crew of our guides built the Mt. Nimbus Via Ferrrata in 2009, it started an iron road upsurge in North America in what was previously a European alpine pastime. In the decade-and-a-half since, ferratas have caught hold throughout North American but CMH has remained the foremost Canadian destination for via ferrata adventures with four full-day, world-class routes in stunning, remote locations. The Burns is still where it all started for us, importing an approachable alpine experience that was born in the Dolomites.

“We had a couple of European guides working with us and they’re kicking around ideas and they were like ‘oh, we should build a via ferrata’,” Carl remembers. “It’s been exponential how popular the ferrata is getting. And the really neat thing is at the end of the day, you take someone that’s never climbed a mountain before and you get them up there it’s almost like a life-changing experience for them.”

True wilderness

Western Canada is rich in wilderness and even some of the first to explore this zone understood the importance of the inspiration those surroundings provided.

One of the first mining claims in the area was reportedly named for either Robert Burns, the legendary Scottish poet whose deep influence ranged across Canada—or an early surveyor of the area named after him. Our lodge was named for the creek in that claim and we’ll take the poetic license honouring the romantic poet who provided literal and cultural inspiration to many early Canadians. It’s a setting where one can’t help but wax poetic.

“It’s just an incredible spot. It’s one of the few spots where you can still have access to untouched wilderness and you get to share that with people. To me that’s just a rare commodity these days,” Carl says. “To have that chance to go somewhere in the world and it’s eight other people and myself guiding and that’s it for a thousand square kilometres. There’s nowhere else, you know.”