TRAINS, BEARS & BIRDIES

By Edward Schmidt Jr.

A rail journey through Canada unveils intimate vistas for golf and nature.

The scenery that flashed by outside my train window was surreal — like a moving postcard with no particular end in sight. At a glance, there were snowy peaks, icy glacial lakes, waterfalls, and towering pines as far as the eye could see.

I was two hours removed from Jasper, Alberta, on a two-day rail journey aboard the Rocky Mountaineer, a luxury train service that follows the historical train route constructed more than 100 years ago through Western Canada and the Canadian Rockies to Vancouver.

This was a first for me. Not traveling by train, mind you, but riding the rails on a golf vacation. The rhythmic chugging around mountains, interrupted by moments of pure, kid-like joy when a bald eagle, bear, or elk was spotted, dramatized the allure of untouched wilderness and provided precious downtime for reflection and meditation.

My favorite spot on the train was the open-air vestibule at the end of the car where I would gaze at the rugged landscape, let the wind whip through my hair, and review my previous day’s round of golf. I would inhale slowly and fill my lungs with fresh mountain air, and like some magic elixir I was rewarded with a new perspective on a triple bogey where my ball had bounced crazily off a tree into a lake.

“Bear on the right!” an elderly man in a red flannel shirt yelled as everyone on the platform turned in unison to see a black, furry creature lumber clumsily 50 yards away. Suddenly all 10 of us high-fived each other, basking in our good fortune. I can’t fully explain it, but I played six fantastic golf courses in my seven-day journey and managed a few sensational birdies, but none of them compared to that bear-sighting on the back of a swiftly moving train in Alberta.

Still, this story is as much about birdies and golf carts as it is about bears and trains.

TAKE THE GLACIAL HIGHWAY
Two days before I boarded the Rocky Mountaineer in Jasper, I stopped in Banff, a classy Alberta ski town that serves as Canada’s sophisticated answer to Aspen. The streets of Banff are lined with clothing boutiques, jewelry stores, art galleries, and alfresco restaurants, which, on my visit, were all packed with smiling American tourists relishing the favorable exchange rate with the Canadian dollar.

Just a 10-minute walk from the town center sits the ever-so-stately Banff Springs Hotel, a massive, 105-year-old stone edifice styled after the baronial castles of Scotland. Encircling the hotel is a 27-hole golf course, a mountain gem designed in 1928 by golf architect Stanley Thompson, considered Canada’s premier course designer.

The holes run along the banks of the Bow River and against the backdrop of the Sulphur and Tunnel mountains and Mount Rundle. At first glance, the course looks like easy pickings with no combination of nines more than 6,725 yards and fairways as wide as a football field on most holes. Yet optical illusions are created by the encroaching mountain landscape as tricks are played on your eyes, making club selection a practice in calculated guesswork tantamount to answering Regis Philbin’s million-dollar question with no lifelines.

Few golf holes in the world make a lasting impression like the fourth hole on the Stanley Thompson 18, called the Devil’s Cauldron. You emerge from a dark forest of spruce and fir onto an elevated tee to see a green 192 yards across a glacial lake framed by a steep bank. It’s one of the most photogenic golf holes in the world. Looking back, my strategy on the hole was flawless. I smartly had my playing partner take all my pictures — including the obligatory pose on the tee with the lake and mountain backdrop — before I teed off. Quite honestly, I couldn’t even force a smile after I dumped my tee shot in the water a mere two feet from the other bank.

My smile returned after a couple of pars and a birdie on the back nine and it got even wider at Solace, the Spa at Banff Springs. Ski resorts know spas, and this pamper pavilion of cascading waterfalls, whirlpools, and saltwater pools erases double bogeys better than any 19th hole libation.

The following day, I slipped my well-massaged frame into a window seat for the four-hour bus ride from Banff to Jasper, arguably one of the more ruggedly scenic highways in North America. The 150-mile-long Icefields Parkway allows even the most domesticated city slicker to see wilderness at its most pristine state.

With a backdrop of mountains, glaciers, and lakes, it is common to see herds of elk, the occasional black bear with her cubs, goats scaling steep rocky slopes, and mountain sheep wandering out in the middle of the highway. But our group hit some sort of mother lode of wildlife sightings when a black bear stumbled out of a thick stand of trees and charged our slow-moving bus. Our driver’s eyes bugged out like some freaked-out cartoon character and he later confided, “I’ve been driving this route for 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Add to that sight the alpine meadows of Bow Summit, the Columbia Icefields with six glaciers, and Sunwapta Canyon, and I managed to pack a year’s worth of nature watching into a morning drive.

LUXURY CAMPING ANYONE?
The scenery doesn’t stop once you reach Jasper Park Lodge. On the shores of Lake Beauvert in the 4,200-square-mile Jasper National Park, the Jasper Park Lodge is the quintessential Canadian Rocky Mountain lodge. I’m not the only one who thinks so. Hollywood producers filmed such classics as River of No Return and The Far Country here.

With its rustic, but elegantly appointed suites, cabins, and chalets with private fireplaces or Jacuzzis, Jasper Lodge is the antithesis of the backwoods, “sleep on a rickety cot in a tent with buzzing mosquitoes” experience. At Jasper, you’re surrounded by all the majesty of nature along with an opulent lodge with giant stone fireplaces and a boutique shopping arcade, gourmet dining in the celebrated Edith Cavell Room, and flower-lined walkways. Queen Elizabeth, the Rockefellers, and the Kennedys have all signed the guest register, and Microsoft guru Bill Gates has visited for inspiration.

The Jasper Park Lodge golf course is adroitly designed so many of the holes line up with surrounding mountain peaks, and golfers are always looking at a mountain when teeing off. In fact, on the second hole, a 488-yard, par-5, players have to aim at the “nose” of the Old Man of the Mountain in the Colin Range to have any chance at par.

Wide fairways are carved from a thick forest of tall pines, firs, and aspens, but they narrow to make second and third shots a bit tricky. On the back nine, the course takes a three-hole detour around a peninsula that juts out into Lake Beauvert.

If you play better in front of a gallery, the eclectic mix of onlookers should inspire you. Herds of elk, staring blankly at golfers, are often spotted near the fairways. More than 300 deer and elk graze on or near the golf course, and geese flock near the water areas.

ALL ABOARD FOR VANCOUVER
Following an overnight stop in Kamloops, British Columbia, the Rocky Mountaineer’s second act was a surprising one. As the train chugged to Vancouver, the scenery changed from the majestic peaks in Alberta to the desolate, wild, sagebrush hills in British Columbia.

The engine groaned and the brakes squealed as the train traversed through ominous sounding places like Black Canyon Tunnel and Hell’s Gate. It was comforting to sit in my recliner seat in a double-deck domed car while hundreds of feet below white-water rafters were riding the rapids of the Jaws of Death Gorge drifting merrily, and I presume unknowingly, toward a stretch called Suicide Gulch.

Once the Fraser River widened, the attendants announced Vancouver was not far away. The train picked up speed as it snaked through the lush, fertile Fraser Valley where farmlands, lumberyards, and mills abound.

The Rocky Mountaineer backed its way into Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station in late afternoon for the end of the 527-mile journey.

GREENS AND SLOPES
After a night’s rest in the posh environs of Vancouver’s Waterfront Centre Hotel overlooking a harbor dotted with cruise ships and seaplanes, our group made the one-hour drive to the dual-peaked ski resort and evolving golf destination of Whistler, Canada. Only one main road leads from Vancouver to the Whistler/Blackcomb ski area, and the rugged settings are a continuation of the inspiring scenery I’d witnessed on the train for two days.

About 40 miles outside of Vancouver, you’ll want to slow down and take a moment to marvel at a dramatic peninsula green jutting into a huge fjord. The hole is part of the Furry Creek Golf & Country Club, a Robert Muir Graves design that is one of the most talked about new courses in Canada.

On the last few miles drive into Whistler, the ski slopes etched on the side of the mountains look serene and tame. Yet, once the snow falls, the area takes its place as the consensus No. 1 ski resort in the world, according to several major national ski publications.

One of the most appealing aspects of the town is its pedestrian village concept, where everything from open-air cafés and nightclubs to hotels and shops (and even a driving range) are never more than a five-minute walk apart.

Golf, however, not great snow, comforting hot cider, or après-ski bistros, was what attracted me to Whistler. The ski town uses a growing golf menu to appeal to summer visitors. Our headquarters hotel for our three-day, golf-’til-you-drop itinerary was the Chateau Whistler Resort, a modern, amenity-loaded lodge at the base of Blackcomb Mountain. The resort’s wildly undulating Robert Trent Jones Jr. design could possibly double as a ski slope if needed. With 300 feet of elevation gain, the Chateau Whistler Golf Club is to high-handicappers what the expert slope is to novice skiers — a wild and humbling experience.

Jones seemingly incorporated every conceivable aspect of the mountain golf experience with acres of ancient Douglas firs, babbling mountain streams, mountain ledges, and spectacular elevated tees with views of both the Blackcomb and Whistler mountains.

It’s difficult to pick just one hole that stands out, but the 212-yard, par-3, eighth hole was the center of conversation after the round as my playing partners and I noshed on burgers and salads in the clubhouse grillroom. The hole is lined up with the ski runs of Whistler Mountain and features a postage-stamp green surrounded by water on the left, with an unforgiving slice of granite rock flanking the right side.

Nearby, the Nicklaus North Golf Course, which is known locally as “Nick North,” is a 4-year-old Jack Nicklaus signature design where strategically placed sand bunkers await every errant shot.

Set in a valley, the course is part good Nicklaus the designer and part penal Nicklaus the designer. The front nine is open and accommodating, where birdie chances are possible even for high-handicappers. Yet, once you make the turn, Nicklaus cranks up the challenge with two par-3s over water, a par-5 with a sinewy fairway not much wider than a driveway, and a finishing hole that plays into a prevailing wind with a creek running across the front of a green flanked by bunkers. I didn’t feel too bad about my double bogey on the last hole when I learned from the pro that Fred Couples has played it four times and never parred it.

But, like I said, this trip was never only about bogeys and birdies anyway. After all, it’s the black bear I saw from the back of a train that will forever remain the indelible memory of my golf trip to the mountains in Canada.

Travel writer Edward Schmidt Jr. has seen a wide collection of animals following many of his errant tee shots into heavily wooded areas.

THINGS TO KNOW
Golf travel operators: PerryGolf, 800.344.5257, www.perrygolf.com; Intergolf, 800.468.0051, www.golf.com/travel/intergolf. Identify yourself as an Associate member for special privileges.
Rail travel: Rocky Mountaineer Railtours, 800.665.7245, www.rockymountaineer.com
For more information: Banff/Lake Louise Tourism Bureau, 403.762.0270; Jasper Tourism and Commerce, 780.852.3858; Tourism Whistler, 604.932.3928.