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Accommodations
Tipi Village Accommodation
 THERE COULD be few better “Canadian wilderness” stories to tell upon returning home than one about getting to stay in a real First Nations tipi. This style of dwelling has been used by many native tribes throughout North America for centuries longer than our dwellings of today have been in use by non-natives. Many of us today have ideas of primitiveness, inefficiency, and cold when thinking of a tipi, but those misnomers are very far from the truth. We have only to think about how frequently our home styles of today have to be upgraded and improved for stability, weatherproofing, and structure, as compared to the basic tipi design, which has stood through millennia without hardly needing to change at all.
Our four tipis are built in a traditional Lakota style, with two having traditional earth floors, and two with wood platforms. They are currently being added to with traditional tipi “furniture”, such as backrests, buffalo furs for the floors, and handmade pillows for your added comfort and warmth. Furthermore, the woodpile is always stocked for wood fires in the centre pit to take off the chill of a cool night. Tipi accommodation also includes the use of the main lodge and all of its facilities, as described below. We will always be on hand to make your tipi stay enjoyable, comfortable, and memorable, and most guests are indeed pleasantly surprised. This could be a unique holiday and cultural learning experience for any family, single traveler, or group, as you engage with this rich culture of history, survival, skill, and legend first hand.
Cabin Accommodation
 Kootenay Wilderness Tours is a natural affiliation to the picturesque CrossRiver Wilderness Centre. It hosts many guests from all around the world, and will be our gathering point for all packages. The main building is a spacious and clean mountain lodge with kitchen and bathroom facilities, pure mountain water, log-furnished living room, two large decks, outdoor wood-fired hot tub, and a cozy view of the mountains across the Kootenay River valley. The private cabins are nestled amidst the trees around a picturesque clearing south of the main lodge. All are within a 10-60 second walk from the lodge, and are decorated in various themes that reflect their wilderness setting. Each contain a queen-sized log bed, a twin bed, a three-piece bathroom, and a cozy-corner fireplace. The whole wilderness retreat is a self-sufficient, eco-sensitive facility, powered by solar and hydro energy. It was developed with our environmental responsibility policy in mind, which works to ensure a thriving nature and wildlife, and a more pure enjoyment of the beautiful wilderness around us.
 The CrossRiver Wilderness Centre is remotely located in the backcountry of the Kootenay River valley about an hour and a half south of Banff and Lake Louise, just north of Invermere and Radium Hot Springs. It is surrounded by Kootenay National Park; Mt. Assiniboine Provincial Park; Banff National Park; Height-of-the-Rockies Provincial Park; and the Columbia River valley in the Rocky Mountain Trench. Our secluded base gives us immediate access to all these beautiful wilderness places, while offering us more remote routes to them that are virtually untraveled by anyone except us; most people still journey along the much more populated park trails on the other sides of the mountains.
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