Enjoy spa treatments in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and then take it to the next level with miles-high heli-hiking. Combine the Fairmont Banff Springs Willow Stream Spa with a Canadian Mountain Holidays adventure and get the best of both worlds – you truly get away from it all.

You can take this six-day Heli-hiking and spa relaxation experience single, as a couple, or you can travel with friends and family. How you get away from it all is up to you. This Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH) package runs in July, August and early September.

There are plenty of options to fine-tune your getaway. You can find other Alberta holiday ideas like this one, but for more on heli-hiking and spa, read on. 

Up to the Lodge and Wilderness

Guests fly into a remote lodge for three days, but you can expect pampering. Once guests arrive, they get suited up with hiking gear, hiking poles, boots and everything else they need, says Sarah Pearson of Canadian Mountain Holidays’ Sales and Media Relations Department. Then everyone is put into a small group, according to their abilities and preferences.

“If you are a hard charging person and you want to make it to the top of the mountain, you may be in that group,” she says. “But if you are more interested in taking photos and wandering through meadows, you will be put with a group more suited to that.”

Sarah’s been heli-hiking with CMH and knows the power of a journey in the Rockies.

“There is no one else around you, and where we take you there is no sign of roads or trails or human impact,” she says. “You’ll hear the wind blowing through the trees and see mountain goats on a ridge and walk through a meadow of wildflowers with colors bursting – bright yellow daisies and dazzling red flowers.”

“You’ll walk beneath a hanging glacier and look around in the middle of vast wilderness, where you feel tiny in the scope of it,” adds Sarah. “It gives you a chance to be somewhere where everywhere you turn, you will see something amazing and wild.”

From City to Mountains

You can start your holiday in Calgary, the gateway city to the Canadian Rockies. Calgary has more than one million residents and is the financial centre of the oil and gas sector. It is perched at the edge of rolling ranchlands and mountains.

You’ll travel just 90 minutes from the city into the mountains and Banff National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site and Canada’s first national park, where the town of Banff offers city amenities amidst rugged mountain vistas. Your Calgary to Banff transfer is a regular scheduled service.

Tourism to the park was sparked more than 100 years ago when soothing natural hot springs were discovered. It’s fitting that Fairmont’s Willow Stream spa carries on the tradition of rest and relaxation with modern techniques and European-style design in the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, which is known as ‘the Castle in the Rockies.’

Relax at Willow Stream Spa

You’ll spend two nights at the Fairmont Banff Springs with view side rooms and enjoy two spa treatments. Willow Stream Spa is one of the most luxurious in Alberta, and Sarah knows it well.

“At Willow, the minute you walk into the area, it’s a fresh relaxing smell,” she says. “You put on the slippers and robe you are transported into a quiet, Zen-like experience and you can feel yourself start to relax.”

“You can go into the plunge pools and invigorate your senses with the water rushing over your head, and you can lay back into the mineral pool and hear the music and see the clouds rolling over you through a glass ceiling,” she adds.

After you get acclimatized in the town of Banff – remember, you’re in mountain country – you’ll go straight from the hotel by motor coach to one of the CMH lodges. It’s about a two and a half hour ground transfer and then you are whisked you up into the mountains to heli-hike.

Put Life in Perspective

For some travelers, heli-hiking in the Rockies becomes more than just a holiday.

“It will put life in perspective and you will feel you have left your regular busy life behind, because you don’t hear the cell phone or Blackberry, you will just hear yourself think,” says Sarah. “You will go to places you just can’t get to any other way. And you will see in the helicopter across the ranges and mountains that go on forever. Then, you will wander along a ridge and look down into a valley…and the helicopter will pick you up and fly you to another location.”

Gourmet Food Awaits

There are three different lodges associated with this package. At end of your exploration, says Sarah, you can have a glass of wine and tea, have a snack and enjoy the hot tub – and you can sign up for a massage at the lodge.

At 7 p.m., everyone has dinner together. It’s served up family style, so if you are on this package with other people, you can all sit together. But if you are traveling by yourself, you can make new friends.

“Our guides and staff serve, but they will sit down with everyone, so you will get to know everyone while hiking and meet people from around the world,” says Sarah. “We have a pastry chef and a regular chef in each lodge and there is fresh baked bread and fresh Alberta beef and fresh seasonal fruits. No one goes hungry.”