Glacier Mountaineer Lodge — Hotel in Area A (Kicking Horse/Kinbasket Lake)

Want to be fair here because this is an overall great mountain.... PROS: Great mountain, good terrain for everyone, good snow even after 8 days of no new pow, high-quality ski shop, restaurants, coffee shop, and convenience store for day-trippers or on-mountain stays, super friendly and helpful staff everywhere. Our single standard room at Glacier Mountaineer Lodge had great ski-in ski-out accessibility, a mini kitchen, good mattress, a small balcony overlooking the lifts, easy access to base village restaurants, and stores, garage parking, and a ski locker room with boot dryers (!), a dry sauna and a steam room, and a small outside hot tub (capacity for 10). CONS: VERY limited lifts, the gondola is the main access to the whole mountain and if the winds are blowing it may stop every few minutes. Other lifts are really slow so you may spend more time on lifts than skiing (as we did). Our on-mountain stay was most definitely not a "luxury" or "fine" accommodation. The at Glacier Mountaineer Lodge building looks great but the interior materials and design are subpar, from the low-grade stained pine everywhere to the poor room design, paper-thin bathroom door, and flimsy towels. There is no way anyone who skies designed our room. It was SUPER SMALL, so small that there was barely room to move around the bed. Asked for a larger room but fully booked. No room for two bedside tables, and not one chair or a table, so sitting, eating, anything that is done in the room must be done on the bed. If there were better public areas this wouldn't be so much of an issue but the public areas are very poorly designed, with bright overhead lights, furniture pushed to the walls in useless arrangements and bad gas fireplaces in odd locations. There was not one drawer or anywhere to store clothing in our room other than in the rather small, dark closet with a few plastic hangers, or shelves under the bathroom sink that required crawling around next to the toilet. We asked for more hangers and were quickly accommodated but with strange assemble-yourself plastic and wooden hangers that were tricky to use (spent about 1/2 hour getting them work). There were no wall hooks for damp ski clothes, so the bedposts, shower curtain, and folding closet doors became drying racks. Low grade kitchen appliances, with a college dorm non-frost free fridge, that smelled strongly of onions (turned it off, melted the ice and that helped). There were no convenient outlets USB ports (had to move the microwave to use one outlet) and the only useful lighting in the room were bright non-dimmable overheads. And to make the experience even less accommodating, there was DO-NOT and instructional signage everywhere, making it feel like we were staying with a grouchy relative who covers their furniture with plastic (as if signs will make people have common sense). While the dry sauna and steam room were appreciated, the gym area is tiny, with no room to stretch out, one torn mat, and some weights missing. Overall, the hotel and mountain access clearly need investment and/or better planning to come anywhere close to the quality of other resorts...

Firstly, I want to thank Al for her assistance during this unsatisfactory experience. She handled our situation with professionalism and empathy, and by no means is this poor eating a reflection of her.

Upon checking in, Google Maps takes you to what is the front door but there is actually another door for the Lobby in the building beside. That should be updated. Check-in was standard with another employee until they mentioned that all restaurants in the area were closed for the evening. I thought it was odd since the location is 20km away from downtown Golden. Having no food options open available for guests past 4pm in peak summer is a little bizarre to me. Then, the employee waited until the very last thing to share that the elevators were closed and that we would be staying on the 3rd floor, meaning that we would need to climb 6 flights of stairs with our bags. If the employee would have declared this upon check-in, I would have asked for a refund and stayed elsewhere. Because this was not an option, the employee offered to help us with our bags.

My father has mobility issues, making stairs incredibly challenging and the reason we stayed at this hotel is because I confirmed on their website/amenities that elevators are available. Although Al and the other employee did help us to our room with our bags, they could obviously see how impacted my father was by having to hike up the stairs and across the hotel. I did ask the other employee if there were any other options for a different room or building, and they said no.

Once we got to our room, there was no air conditioning and it was 30 degrees outside. The sheets provided did not fit the bed (I have seen multiple other reviews attesting to this), and that is obviously incredibly disgusting, having multiple guests sleep on the same surface. The screen door was ripped open. Everything was old and unclean.

As I settled in after ten minutes, I felt uncomfortable and no longer wanted to stay on the premises. I called the front desk and spoke with Al about these issues, and she was thoughtful, considerate, and empathetic about everything that had gone wrong. She offered me a few options, including a partial refund or a change of rooms. Although kind to offer, it was obviously frustrating to hear that there, in fact, was an option to change rooms and move to a building with an elevator. She said that the other employee was still in training, but it is frustrating that the employee was so quick to shut me down when I asked if there was another option if they weren’t absolutely sure about it. She then brought up a portable fan to air out the room and a complimentary bottle of wine to apologize.

The location, I’m sure, would be fantastic for folks in the winter who are skiing or snowboarding. With no open restaurants in the summer, it did not suit our needs.

I will not be staying at this location again, nor recommending...

I will start this by mentioning that I really do not like leaving negative reviews. I generally give folks the benefit of the doubt and realize places can have an off day. In this case, however, I still have a negative feeling weeks later and feel compelled to leave a note. We booked here to have one nice hotel stay in a 10 day camping vacation full of really big days in the mountains. We arrived needing a good night sleep and were really looking forward to it. We found our room and were startled to see how small it was for the price, but no worries, we can deal with that. However, when it did come time to rest. I did not sleep a wink. The unit next door had loud music blasting through the walls and lights blaring through the connecting door until well after 11pm (against the rules, according to the extensive 'rules list' the hosts gave us upon arrival). Knowing I needed sleep, I phoned the front desk to complain. The clerk said he would call that room. Unfortunately, the music was still continuing an hour later. I phoned the front desk again. The clerk said they would go upstairs to check. STILL we were pestered by loud, bass music until beyond 2pm! At this point I was almost convinced nobody was even in there. I phoned the desk again, VERY FRUSTRATED. The clerk said there was absolutely nothing he could do. We were never offered another room to sleep in, and the clerk said they wont do anything about the noisy guests. We were basically told "sorry, but deal with it". I'm sorry but at this point it was unacceptable. It was at this point we were convinced nobody was even in the room next door, but still the clerk refused to go check, or enter and power things down. I went down the next morning to complain that at sunrise, we STILL had loud music coming from next door. To make matters worse, we were never offered a break on the price at checkout. I failed to even mention the slightly dirty carpets, somewhat stained bedding, and half working shower head, and filthy microwave we were forced to heat our food up in. Overall, this was an exceptionally disappointing experience. We had hoped to ski golden this coming winter, but this leaves me feeling unwelcome and looking elsewhere. I will not recommend this hotel, as at no point did I feel my concerns were seen as valid. What an utterly miserable stay. For almost $300 we'd have had a better experience sleeping in...