18 JUL 2019: The Rocky Mountaineer is an adjective-depleting experience that commemorates 20 years of luxurious service and adventure this year. The Mountaineer packages seamless, superior service with great food and extraordinary scenery.

This service has thought about every aspect of the travel experience. The staff are well-hired and well-trained. You can’t fake the kind of people skills that Rocky Mountaineer attendants posses. They’re considerate, efficient and happy. Rather than asking, they anticipate needs. The service is as grand as the landscape. It’s a level of retro elegance reminiscent of days when well-dressed people travelled with retinues and steamer trunks.

I have travelled the Mountaineer three times. Twice from Vancouver to Calgary/Banff and once from Banff to Vancouver. The trip never gets old. And for those who require new, the Mountaineer offers four routes (First Passage to the West, Journey through the Clouds, Rainforest to Gold Rush and Coastal Passage) and the opportunity to combine them to create a two-, four-, seven, or 21-day package. This is a three-season experience connecting Seattle, Vancouver, Whistler, Kamloops, Quesnel, Jasper and Banff.

The Mountaineer has two service levels: Silver and Gold Leaf. Silver would spoil most guests, with large comfortable seats, new panorama windows built into the cars’ curved ceiling, story-teller seat attendants who not only deliver background on the places the train rolls through but provide a full hot meal service to your seat.

The Gold Leaf is provided in a two-level dome car. The dome cars, like all of the Mounainteer’s rolling stock have been completely refurbished for this anniversary. There are 72, large leather, business class-type seats with a variety of adjustable settings on the upper level. The lower level holds the 36-seat dining room and kitchen. Restaurant-quality food is freshly prepared by a three-person culinary team assigned to each Gold car. To prevent splashing, soups and sauces are prepared in the Mountaineer’s land-based kitchens, otherwise all other meals are prepared from scratch on-board. Between meal service is an endless rolling hors d’oeuvres and bar service.

The extra treat offered by the Gold cars is a large open-air deck. Standing out in the fresh mountain air as you pass snowy peaks, thick forests and river valleys is a delicious way to experience the Rockies. Annnd, for those with mobility issues, the Gold Cars have a small elevator.

Another option are their event cars. The Mountaineer has three cars designed to host meetings, receptions, dances or other event. Each car has a bar, washrooms, flatscreen TVs and a boardroom table that can be reconfigured or moved aside.

Riding these rails is like being part of a great nature documentary. Other than when the rails were laid, much of this landscape is as untouched as it has been for millennium. This is a view denied to all but extreme adventurists and those privileged enough to take this train. We pass prairies, foothills, wetlands, flatlands, forests, snow-capped mountains and glacier-fed rivers, lakes and gorges. We see beaver dams, elk, deer, bear, osprey and gravity-defying big-horned sheep who jump from one improbable perch to the next, somewhat like nature’s ultimate circus act. In one river we see the red schools of what my seatmate said are Kokanee salmon.

The Rocky Mountaineer, which travels at an average speed of 50kpm, has a policy of slowing when animals are spotted near the tracks. An announcement is made about the animal or bird spotted and position – ‘eagle at 11 o’clock’, ‘bear on riverbed’ – which gives passengers a chance to focus their cameras and reduces the interference to the animal so they are less quick to run off.

I consider the Rocky Mountaineer a rolling resort.

The Vancouver-Kamloops-Lake Louise-Banff route, Passage to the West, is a two-day, one-night experience. To ensure you don’t miss any scenery and so crew can thoroughly clean the train (including the windows for better photos) and restock it, The Mountaineer overnights in Kamloops, where it owns one hotel and contracts with others. Guests are pre-registered at their hotel and find their luggage waiting for them in their room. In the morning luggage is left by the door for pick up just as you would when departing a cruise ship. At the end of your trip you can opt to pick up your luggage at the station or if staying in the destination have it waiting in your hotel room.

On the Passage to the West we rolled past pioneering communities with rustic names and identities, like Skuzzy Creek, Boston Bar, Jackass Mountain, Cisco Crossings, Avalanche Alley, Jaws of Death Gorge, and the Three Sisters Mountains. We experienced the engineering miracles of the “Spiral Tunnels” with their 250- and 230-degrees turns. And in Craigellachie, where the last spike in the national railway was driven on November 7, 1885, a guide at the small railway museum dressed in an opera hat and fake beard stood on an historic sector of track with a mallet and pretended to re-create the scene for us.

Canadians have history as leaders in luxury travel. Canadian Pacific built the chain of chateau-and-castle-like hotels now operated by Fairmont. Halifax’s Sir Samuel Cunard launched ocean liners which still bear his name. A Torontonian created the Four Seasons Hotel chain. Another Ontarian conceived the idea of the Ritz Carlton Ocean Yachts. The Rocky Mountaineer is an equal partner in this legacy of luxury.