Someone was bound to find out, I suppose. But why did it have to be the widely-distributed, well-read Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel magazine? Now all sorts of people know British Columbia’s Emerald Lake Lodge. In Yoho National Park, 40 km (25 mi) west of Canada’s famed Lake Louise, this place ranks as one of Frommer’s seven most stunning North American getaways.

I love that big log cabin lodge, especially in winter. The snow there is somehow thicker and fluffier than anywhere else, making for amazing snowshoeing and cross-country skiing around pretty little Emerald Lake. The food’s five-star stuff with a Rocky Mountain wild game wrinkle: free-range elk, bison and caribou or, for more traditional palates, Alberta beef, arguably the world’s best, or lamb. Rooms all have fireplaces, balconies and feather duvet bedcovers as thick as the snow outside.

Best of all are night skis around the lake or walks along the pathways connecting two dozen two-storey, four-guestroom cabins sprinkled around the lodge’s 13 acres of forested space. Christmas lights and picturesque beauty everywhere turn these forested acres into a little slice of seasonal heaven. There’s no TV, no phone, no Internet in the rooms; just you, the lodge, the lights and the lake.

I haven’t been here in summer, but I’m told the lake’s colour lives up to its name and the trails I snow-shoed in the winter (don’t pack gear; they have lots at Emerald Sports, a lakeside recreation cabin) become wonderful hiking and nature trails.

The Canadian Pacific Railway built a lodge here in 1902 and expanded it in the 1920s. Renovated and re-opened in the 80s, it’s remained one of BC’s treasures for those in-the-know. A few privileged travel writers like me discovered it—but it’s one of those places you don’t want to write about because it’s magic, and you don’t want it crowded.

Now that Frommer’s has gone and let the secret out, though, I’ll try to take comfort in the fact that the lodge can only accommodate 200 people at a time.

Still—I liked being the only one on the trails, dammit!

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