The Lake Agnes Tea House Hike

The trail leaves from the lakeshore in front of the Chateau, at the right hand end as you face the water. There is no separate trailhead car park, so you are competing for the lakeshore lot, which fills by sunrise in summer.

If you are on the shuttle, walk left along the lakeshore from the drop-off and the trail sign is about two hundred metres along.

The first kilometre and a half climbs steadily through forest on a wide track. It is the least interesting part and the part where most people decide whether they are doing this or not.

At about 2.6 kilometres you reach Mirror Lake, a small round pond under the Big Beehive. From there the trail steepens, passes a set of wooden stairs beside a waterfall, and comes out at Lake Agnes with the tea house on the shore.

495 metres of climbing over 3.9 kilometres is a real hill, roughly the same as walking up a 130-storey building. It is relentless rather than technical, and there is nothing exposed or scrambly.

Anyone who walks regularly manages it. Anyone who does not will find it hard work, and there is no shortcut and no way down other than the way you came.

The Lake Agnes Tea House opens 8 am to 5 pm and serves light lunches, desserts and drinks. It is cash only. There is no card machine, no signal, and no cash point on the mountain.

Everything on the menu is carried up, and the rubbish is carried down. Bring your own water and take your recycling and litter out with you.

Both tea houses run from early June to early October. Those dates shift with the snow, and the tea house closes for the season without much notice once the weather turns.

Outside those months the trail is still walkable to the lake, but there is nothing at the top and the upper section holds snow and ice well into June.

The Big Beehive is 1.5 kilometres further from Lake Agnes and takes about an hour there and back. It is the switchbacks above the far end of the lake, and the view down onto Lake Louise is the reason most people keep going.

The Highline trail links Lake Agnes across to the Plain of Six Glaciers, so both tea houses can be done as one loop of about 14.3 kilometres in roughly five hours.

Start before 8 am and you climb in the quiet and reach the tea house as it opens. Start at 10 am in July and you will queue at the tea house and pass people the whole way up.

The car park situation forces this anyway. If you have driven, you are there at dawn, so use it.