When you visit Banff National Park one of the activities you’ll undoubtedly hear about is hiking to one of the tea houses. Mainly this consists of people hearing about Lake Agnes, and some people don’t actualy know there’s two. But after our exploration and research, here are my thoughts. We only had time to do one of the hikes, so I obsessed over which one to do, but found a cool compromise to see most of both hike, so read on.
So, which hike, the Lake Agnes Teahouse or The Plain of Six Glaciers TeaHouse?
Our tea house hike was the highlight of our trip, because going on a beautiful hike to a tea house at the break of dawn in the middle of nowhere, with lake views, and insane wildflowers during the summer, is truly an amazing experience. You have two options of tea houses in the park, the Lake Agnes Teahouse or The Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House. You can do both, but that does make for about a 10+ mile hike, but I’ll explain the differences below so you can decide what you want to do.
When should I start my tea house hike?
Now, first and foremost, we are not early risers, quite the opposite actually, we’re those friends who sleep in. BUT there are two advantages to waking up early on this day. The first, is that if you don’t have a Lake Louise shuttle pass, you have to get up there early in order to park in the parking lot. The lot fills up around 7AM at the latest we were told. We got up there around 5:45am and the car park was about 1/3 full already. The second reason to wake up early is, the tea houses only fit so many people, so you want to be one of the first 30 or so people if you want to dine-in and have a cool experience. You can wait in line but things take a while at a place where there are very few resources.
When do the tea houses open and close?
At the time of this writing Lake Agnes Tea House opens at 8am, and The Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House opens at 9am. So if you would like to try and wake up a little later (I wouldn’t by much), maybe heading straight to the Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House. Both places close at four.
For reference, we chose to do the Lake Agnes Tea House, we left a little after 6am, and got to the Tea House at 7:30am. there were about 20 people up there, we waited in line for 30 minutes, and got a beautiful table outside. The Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House opens at 9am, so you might have a little more time to be one of the first in line. We heard long queues begin around 9am for both.
How long does it take to hike each?
Lake Agnes takes about 1 – 1.5 hours each way, and the Plain of Six Glaciers will take you about 2-2.5 hours each way.
Food served at the tea houses
When I looked at both menus, both serve biscuits with jam and butter. Both serve tea, soup, sandwiches, and and an assortment of different snacks and meals. The only true difference is that The Plain of Six Glaciers serves coffee! So if tea is not your thing and you need a coffee to start your morning, that could be the deciding factor right now.
What should I wear?
Definitely bring warm clothes for this hike, it’s cold in the morning and I regretted hiking in shorts. We were freezing sitting outside at the tea house. Definitely bring a jacket at a minimum, and then your normal hiking gear. There are some looser rocks if you continue past Lake Agnes and choose the longer route, so good hiking boots are recommended. But that’s true all around this park.
Now the question is, which teahouse hike should you do?
I wanted the best of both worlds, so we visited Lake Agnes, but did the extended route to see some of the trail for the Plain of Six Glaciers, and I do not regret it. Some caveats:
How highly reviewed are both hikes?
If you look at reviews for both tea houses at the time of this writing, Lake Agnes Tea House has 4.5 stars on Google, and The Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House has 4.6 stars. Both are insanely highly reviewed, so you really can’t go wrong, both are said to be amazing.
How hard are the hikes, in comparison?
We read (and believe) that the Lake Agnes Teahouse was more strenuous because it’s nearly the same elevation gain of around ~1300 feet for both hikes. However, Lake Agnes is just over 2 miles up (4.5 mile round trip, 1300 feet elevation gain), and the Plain of Six Glaciers is a little over 3 miles up (6.5 miles, 1200 feet elevation gain). This guy said he’s more impressed with The Plain of Six Glaciers.
Which hike is more crowded?
If you’re trying to avoid crowds, we would recommend going with The Lake Agnes is notoriously the more popular trail with more crowds.
Difference in scenery for the two tea house hikes:
Lake Agnes Tea House scenery:
For me, what we would see along the way was really important. For Lake Agnes, you start the 3.5km hiking trail from the shore of Lake Louise by the parking lot. The trail is uphill basically the entire way. This is not an easy climb with the switchbacks, but you are out of the sun in the forest. Generally scenery up was beautiful, but just forest. If you’re from Denver like us, nothing life-changing. Along the way you’ll pass Mirror Lake and arrive to Lake Agnes with the teahouse shortly after. The Tea House itself is on Lake Agnes, and it is above a small waterfall. But only about half of the people seated will get to enjoy the outdoor scenery. Once you get seated, you can choose from various teas (no coffee here), and then some fun homemade snacks including biscuits, breads, soups, sandwiches, or whatever else they decided to make that day.
The Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House
The big reward at the end of this hike is a glacier view, but do note you need to go slightly beyond the tea house to see it. So if that’s what you’re looking for, this is it. We finished on the path of this hike, so I’m going to reverse engineer it. You start at the back of Lake Louise which in and of itself is great, because you start by walking the entire right perimeter of the Lake Louise. Then you start with an incline up along a river that runs into the lake which is absolutely gorgeous. And you follow that river up along a path of amazing wildflowers in the summer. From then, we did not continue on but we know that when you continue the path it is more wide open with less shade protection. You happen upon the Tea House, and then after or before you’re done at the Tea House, you’ll want to continue on to The Six Glaciers Viewpoint where you see a beautiful glacier. The reason we didn’t continue on is we had seen so many amazing glaciers in the days prior, and we didn’t have more hiking in us 🙂
How to get the best of both worlds? Should I visit both tea houses?
Now here’s my recommendation if you want to do Lake Agnes, which gives you the hike in Lake Agnes and most of the hike of Plain of Six Glaciers. I STRONGLY recommend not going back down the way you came for the most beautiful views and scenery in the park. We followed this trail but added on the Big Beehive viewpoint. At a minimum, continue on to the Beehive, it’s one of the most stunning views in the park of Lake Louise, see below picture. But if you do the entire loop plus Beehive the round trip is about 7.5 miles (can’t recommend this enough). From Lake Agnes you’ll continue along the beautiful lake with stunning wildflowers. Then from there you go up a steep hill to get to the Big Beehive, seriously gorgeous. Then you’ll start to make your decent after a long ascent and you’ll be happy you have no more climbing to do. The hike back is along a river, and then ends with you on the shore of Lake Louise which is so great to see the other side of it.
However, if you do Plain of Six Glaciers, you might be spent with the nearly 9 miles it will take for you to get to the glacier and back. However if you’re up for a few more miles, heading up to The Big Bee Hive viewpoint (see below), and even checking out the view of Lake Agnes right below we think is worth it. It will certainly add a lot more climbing for you, but hey, once in a lifetime.
What do you think, which Tea House Hike did you do? Which did you love more? Share your thoughts and comments below!
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