First item on the agenda, get some skates for Wilson. Backtrax is a local ski shop on Bear Street in Banff, and it's the quintisential "away from home" ski shop. They answer our mindless and continuous questions, quickly outfit CW with skates and charge us a whopping 14 bucks for two days. I'm guessing skates run you about 14 bucks an hour at the Chateau Lake Louise.
Banff is certainly in the mountains, but it feels like a big place . . . you've got dozens of choices for hotels, lodging, fine dining, cold beers and just about anything you might need. In reality, it feels much bigger than Whistler (the town, not the ski area).
Lake Louise is much smaller and hardly passes for a "village". It's about 30 miles north along the TransCanada Highway, a nice 4 lane road with few inclines or declines. The Bow River valley starts to narrow this far north, with the Lake Louise Ski Area on the east side and the famous lake and namesake Chateau on the west side, about five miles apart.
Many of us outsdoorsy Americans like to scoff at such development within the confines of a pristine national park. Maybe we're right, maybe we are wrong. One thing we do know, the Canadians make it work with Lake Louise. The Chateau certainly dominates the scene, but also enhances the experience.
Heated bathrooms in the parking lot for "non-guests", a short 200 yard walk to the lake, cross country trails right from the shoreline, and of course a section of the lake reserved for ice skating, along with a Zamboni to smooth the surface for "family skaters" and a scaled down hockey rink. This guy thinks he can play hockey, but Amy doubts it. Have you ever seen a more stiff person on skates?
Meanwhile, Amy was all smiles and ready to hit the ice.
The Mister had some fun there, but he'll get his later when he attempts to go sledding without a sled.
It didn't take either of us long to finally understand why hockey players have such short stints of ice time. Its tiring, we would skate a lap or two before taking a rest. After skating, we retired to the FJ in the parking lot for snacks. We hadn't quite worked up the courage to crash the Chateau just yet, plus we didn't want to peel off all the winter clothes. We had more outdoor activities. Next up . . . cross country skiing. Our goal,the end of the lake.
Skiing on the Lake has its advantages, no hills and it's disadvantages, even though you know its frozen, there are puddles of standing water all over the place, thus one thinks they could crash through at any given moment. The lake is less than 2 miles in length, and eventually we ran into a stream that was crossing on top of the ice. No thanks. That was the end of the road for skiing, but not for hiking. In the summer of 2006, we hiked the Lake Agnes trail to a picturesque tea house with Jared and Tyler. We didn't make it that far on this day, but were rewarded with a view of an uniquie ice fall.
Later, Wilson saw an 8 year kid slide down a makeshift sled track from the ice fall towards the lake, the kid tumbled left, then right, and nearly ended up in the standing water by the stream. Why would Wilson think this would be fun?
Hmmm, he claimed he was really flying down that hill like the Hermantor. Ha, I was there, it was more like an elephant walking in deep mud, with a constant flow of snow going up his pant legs as he dugs his heels into the snow.
We finished the day with snacks inside the Chateau Lake Louise, a maze of it's own with grand staircases and hallways leading every which way. We found a deli and were quite astonished at the fabulous selection and reasonable prices. One of us failed to note the changing temps, 20's outside, 70's inside, and the 90's when seated next to a forced air heater. While the heater caused quite an undressing, it was very convenient for drying off soggy gloves and hats.
We set off for Banff just before it got dark and hurriedly made our way up to the Banff Hot Springs for a soak to celebrate our day on skates and skis. The hot springs are above the Banff Springs Hotel on Sulphur Mountain, about a 5 minute drive from downtown and a 10 minute drive from our hotel, which just so happened to be further than we wanted to drive (again) after discovering in the parking lot that one of us (the same "us" as before) failed to bring his/her handy bag of swim gear that was packed that morning.
Alas, cold beers at our room in the Rundlestone livened the mood and gave us the desire to venture out for dinner. While we both claim to shy away from chain restaurants, we both seem to have an affection for Earl's. We refuse to go anywhere near the one in Bellevue, but we're quite happy to partake in Canadian ski towns.
The highlight of the night was the hockey game, did i say hockey? as in NHL? One might have thought that, but this was Junior Hockey, that's right, teenagers playing for national pride. When we walked into Earl's, there was nary a murmur to be heard, except for the obnoxious Russian trio in the corner. It was midway through the 3rd period, and score was 5-1, Russia over Canada in the Semi-finals. Soon, Russia scored again, and the Russians were even more giddy. Then finally, the home team scored and the masses at Earl's sounded like it was a tie game, they had hope. They only needed 4 more goals in 7 minutes to force overtime. Well, as you can guess, the first 3 came in rapid fashion, and with every passing minutes, the smugness on that Russian trio evaporated into patriotic pride for the rest of the bar. The final minutes were a frenzy of shots hitting the cross bar with everyone in the bar hanging on every movement.
Final tally . . . 3 celebratory vodka shots for the table in the corner. We saw Canucks, Canadians, Jets, Oilers, and Flames games on various TV's this week, and all of that combined did not match the passion we witnessed that night in Earl's.
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