Ah, an adventurous trip to the Canadian Rockies in Alberta. Dehydrate food for days in advance, stuff and re-stuff camping gear until you’ve mashed your backpack down to a light load, and then schlep your aching body over mountain passes, cirques and meadows.
Finally, you collapse at your backcountry campsite ready to…set up camp. Soak your food. Strike up your stove. Dodge mosquitoes. Pray there’s room on the bear pole…
Hang on a minute. In fact, press STOP. Now rewind and erase.
Get Eco-Friendly at Verde Spa
Spending a weekend, or a long leisurely day, at a Rocky Mountain spa isn’t technically camping, of course. But you can blend your spa holiday with other activities, and the natural touches you’ll find at eco-friendly Verde Spa in the Canadian Rockies makes you breathe deeply -- just like a high alpine pass. And this is one spa trip where your values don’t have to take a vacation when you do.
Check out spa vacations in Alberta that will let you combine hiking, mountain biking and other Canadian Rockies activities with the bliss of easily accessible, pampering spa treatments.
Read on to learn how a weekend in the Canadian Rockies mountain town of Canmore and its new green Verde Spa should unspool, should you decide to get cozy with Mother Nature and pamper yourself.
Go Green with Relaxing Treatments
Cradled by walls of pistachio green and Grizzly Bear brown, you could indeed be in a Rocky Mountain meadow spiked by tall grasses (granted they are artfully arranged in elegant vases), burbling waterfalls (tinkling down walls) and songbirds (that melodically drift out of corners). And you too could leave slathered in oils, but not of the DEET or skin-eating Muskoil, variety.
Canmore is just an hour’s drive west of Calgary, the gateway city to the Canadian Rockies, and it sits at the edge a UNESCO World Heritage site, Banff National Park.
Verde’s No. 1 product line is Eminence –100 per cent organic skin care goods that smell yummy enough to eat. Owner Philippa Liston exhaustively researched eco-friendly product lines and chose Eminence not only because it uses 100 per cent organic fruits, vegetables, flowers and herbs but this 50-year-old company from Hungary hand-harvests the lot, uses a factory that is wind-powered, and showcases a top ingredient – stone crop – that is loaded with healing properties.
Going a shade greener, Liston chose cleaning products that are all phosphate free, biodegradable and VOC-free including their laundry soap. The spa uses energy efficient light bulbs, low-flow showerheads, even their nail polish, SpaRitual, is a vegan line meaning it is free of those headache-inducing toxins like dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and toluene.
Ease into Your Spa Vacation
But first things first. While taking a detailed personal history, I slink back in the reception area with a steaming cup of – not grainy cowboy coffee in a tin cup that I’d be lucky to brew while camping, but – organic Mountain High Chai (note the silk pouches) in a white porcelain bowl. Then a parade of little ceramic pots of smelly wonders begins, all in the name of customizing my treatment by letting me choose aromatic concoctions that blend my preferences with skin care needs.
Now be decisive, I am told, as I dither between a stone crop mask, a pear and green apple combo and a pumpkin latte hydration mask. This is, after all, my future. Do I want to get dipped and baked in Canadian glacial mud as I relax in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, or do I fancy a cucumber mint sugar scrub from the Old World? As I contemplate such organic marvels, rain pounds away outside but the only water I hear at Verde is the whoosh of ocean waves that pulse out of walls.
Mud, it is.
Detoxify in Canadian Glacial Mud
Slipping into a terry robe I am led into a meticulous shadowy chamber where a heated bed that feels nothing like my Thermorest awaits. I am loofaed, then massaged with silky mud and cocooned in layers of plastic wrap and blankets where I bake in the dark for 10 minutes before gurgles of steam coax me into a vault of pore-opening bliss during my spa vacation. A fair rival for any natural hot springs, I think, as I detoxify into a puddle.
Discover an Organic Custom Facial
Besides a healthy roster of massages, Verde’s other most popular treatment is their organic custom facial. For the next hour my face is given a workover like none I've ever experienced. There are about five steps, including a pear and poppy seed polisher, a stone crop wash, the alpha hydroxyl and paprika mask, the massage on my neck and arms, the cool down/hydrating mask plus a nourishing lip balm and Bright Eyes treatment.
Enjoy Sustainable Living at Spas
“I’d like to think that in the name of sustainable living, more and more spas are doing their part to save the planet by going “green,” explains Liston later, while turning my toe nails into pretty pink Chiclets. “Because Canmore is equated with healthy living, setting up an eco-friendly spa in the heart of the Canadian Rockies just seemed right.”
Blackstone Mountain Lodge thought so too as this new condo property immediately booked Verde to run their small on-site spa. And The Spa Ritual, another eco-friendly spa, is slated to open their doors in Calgary, during the summer of ’08.
Although Liston would love to carry products from a local Canmore company like Rocky Mountain Soap Co., she can’t use bars of soap or cakes of oils and creams, for hygienic and eco-friendly reasons. At Verde, you won’t find mini-shampoo bottles but in-shower pump dispensers, no paper towels but cloth, and its small gift shop is stocked with their low-packaged organic product lines. Next up?
“I keep saying that I must have been really good in a past life, because this one is so awfully good,” enthuses Liston, “but a dream would be to design a gold LEED spa, that is wind-powered, has solar panels, geothermal heating, reuses water... the works!”
Until that happens, I’ll be content with a day at Verde (meaning green in Spanish).
More To Do in Canmore
Aside from enjoy the spa at Verde, you could get close to Ma Nature by mountain biking at one of Canada’s premier sites, the Canmore Nordic Centre. Or golfing at SilverTip, or spelunking at Rat’s Nest Cave. Then again, there’s rafting or canoeing along the Bow River from Banff to Canmore or swimming at Grassy Lakes.