» Spa a winter tourism ‘game changer’

The winter tourism season at Clear Lake has become a target of investment over the past five years through efforts of a united group of local busineses.

The locals, under the leadership of Clear Lake Country, have worked for 10 years to build tourism at Clear Lake. The winter season and shoulder seasons are now in focus as summer has been established, said chairperson and founder Karly McRae.

“We really started thinking about what we could do to make winter more interesting to people, and how to get people out here and give them an adventure,” McRae told the Sun in a recent interview.

The efforts include launching the Fire and Frost Festival, expanding ice-skating trails, installing lights, hiring artists for snow sculptures, and most recently, introducing a snow building.

The organization’s newest winter addition is the Klar So Winter Pavilion, which is aimed to be finished in mid January. The pavilion is built entirely from snow, as an arched hallway 16-feet high, that stretches 48 feet in length. Clear Lake Country hired artists to sculpt the project and design interior features, like pillars and walls of ice blocks taken out of Clear Lake. The outside was being carved to host a snow sculpture of a bison when the Sun visited in early January.

The pavilion is something to see, and that’s exactly the point.

It is the newest investment to make Clear Lake a destination in the cold season. The aim is to make Clear Lake worth a trip for Manitobans, Saskatchewanians, and, as much as possible, international travellers beyond the summer season.

Traction is evident in the fact that several local businesses have started to stay open year-round, rather than closing up once summer is over.

The Clear Lake Trading Post, a combined general, clothing and grocery store, is one of the most recent to transform in this way. The owner, Austin Inkster, said the winter season is a new opportunity compared to 10 years ago.

“Back then, I don’t think it would have been feasible,” said Inkster, who owns the store with his wife.

He said many more people are coming up to the community in winter now, and used an example this holiday season of a group of 20 family members coming into his shop while they spent their winter holidays in the area.

The holiday season was crazy, the owner said, and caught him off guard.

“It was insane. It was honestly apocalyptic,” Inkster told the Sun. “To me, three, four years ago, that’s just unheard of.”

Businesses and stakeholders like Inkster are watching closely at signals that the winter season may be steadier. As confidence grows, perhaps the biggest sign is the fact that one business recently launched a multi-million dollar investment in the shoulder and winter seasons.

The Klar So Nordic Spa, which offers heated pools, saunas and a cold plunge, launched in December of 2023 as a targeted investment in year-round offerings, said Parker Buckley, strategic projects manager at Elkhorn Resort, which runs the spa. The spa set a record of roughly 1,000 visitors in the week that ended 2025 and began 2026.

“It was rather surprising to the degree it exceeded our previous record,” Buckley told the Sun in a recent interview. “But we do expect visitor count to rise.”

By nature of the spa’s facilities, it retains value even when the summer season fades away. That was the thought process behind the facility, to lean into a year-round offering.

“It really was an investment in more winter tourism,” Buckley said from the deck of the spa. “We’ve really started to think bigger picture, and longer term.”

Buckley said that the new spa is part of the united effort in the area; the spa will create spillover effects that bring tourism to Clear Lake in the winter, drawing people that will visit Wasagaming. Similarly, he expected that new developments, like the expanded skating trails in Wasagaming, will draw people to the spa.

Friends of Riding Mountain National Park, a non-profit organization, is also on board. Chief administrative officer George Hartlen said the organization began renting snowshoes and other recreational equipment for visitors to drive up visitation.

“There definitely has been a focus on the past 10 years to build out shoulder seasons,” Hartlen said from the organization’s cabin-style building in Wasagaming. “Our shoulder seasons, and particularly our winter season has been a focus.”

The more that businesses in the area stay open in the winter, the more the area grows in value and attracts more tourists. He said there is an understanding in the area that the winter is one of the big opportunities for development, because the summer has already been developed to a large extent.

The spa and the grocery store are two of the most recent examples of investment in the winter season. Hartlen said the Arrowhead Family Resort has started staying open year round as well.

From her Lakeside hotel in Wasagaming, McRae said that it appears efforts have been coming together. She pointed out the window.

“Its the middle of the day on Wednesday, and you can look across the street and see people skiing and skating down the trails,” McRae said. “A few years ago, you would never see that.”

The effort has been underway for some years, but really reached a milestone when the spa opened, she said.

“For me, when Elkhorn ownership announced they were going to do that, it was probably the most exciting and validating thing I could have heard,” McRae said. “The spa is a game-changer. It is an absolute game-changer.”

Clear Lake Country fundraises money through selling branded merchandise, and applying for grants, and then contributes its earnings back to projects that make Clear Lake a more attractive destination. It conducts marketing campaigns on social media, brands Clear Lake as a destination, organizes programming, advocates for partnership and involvement from agencies like Parks Canada, and invests in physical projects like the Klar So Winter Pavilion, among other things.

McRae said the organization started as a partnership between herself and Parks Canada roughly 10 years ago, when Parks Canada was looking to increase visits by 10 per cent. She said Parks Canada and Travel Manitoba contributed $25,000 each at the outset, locals pitched in as well, and visitation has doubled since.

In the future, the winter and shoulder seasons will continue to receive close attention, McRae said. McRae said Clear Lake Country is working with Parks Canada for a potentially expanded skating trail next year in which she hopes to have the ice skating trail wind around a significant portion of Wasagaming, almost like a sidewalk. Indigenous tourism is also an aim for the future, as the organization hopes to attract more businesses to offer experiences and guides in the area. The winter pavilion is set to return each winter with expanded and new uses.

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com