I slept in until 9:30am - that was a good start eh? haha Then I decided to go find me a nice mixed grill breakfast. I mean, I'm in the friggin snowy mountain wilds town capital of the world, there' has to be a mixed grill on offer somewhere right? Wrong. Dammit I walked for almost an hour and all I could find at that time of the morning was a damned Sushi place. WTF? Sushi for breakfast? madness!! Sparta!!! I like Sushi and all, but I was so in the mood for some hot meat and eggs! goddamit. I settled for salami stick from the dodgy asian grocery in town. They were ok but I didn't really eat until a little later.
I was told there was a 10am bus up to the Gondola, but the chap at the hotel got it a bit wrong, it was 10:20am so I got to talk to all the snowboarders as they went past and got in the other buses. Then I had to stand there and say 'no thanks' to the bus drivers, and as I was the only one there, I probably like a little 'down-syndromed'. Nevermind, my bus came eventually. The driver was an Indian guy who told me he normally drives tour buses, not the shuttle, so we got to chatting pretty quickly and he told me he was a MT or MP or something... It's not really spelt like that, but that's how it sounds, maybe someone will correct me later (like just before epunching me in the head or something thinking that I am abusing their race hehe). Anyhow, he said his people were the best looking race, much better than white people, and I agreed and told him that there was no chance of his race going extinct as his women looked pretty good to me. He gave me a sideways look and then he continued to tell me about the surrounding mountains, as I was the only one on the shuttle (familiar story eh?).
About 30 minutes later I got up to the Gondola place and said farewell to my new mate, and went over to the Gondola entrance. Inside were heps of Japanese tourists all sitting down having muffins. How dare they! There was a perfectly good Sushi shop open for Breakky back in Banff... damn tourists haha Anyhow I got on the Gondola and headed up the mountain. I took some photo's on the way up which you can see in my album. It was pretty nice views all around, and the gondola went up at 51 degrees at some places which is pretty steep. Luckily I was the only one in my gondola so if anyone was to fart, then I would be the only one to do haha. Luckily though, no one did and I escaped from my floating plastic cube at the top and I was on top of Sulphur Mountain. There is a bit of history about it, but it's all probably a bit too boring to repeat here (go google it if you want) - as this is an action blog, not some National Geographic channel. heheh Anyhow, at the top of the mountain I finally found found. Some crazy $8 sandwhich, luckily it was big and I munched it down in undoubtedly a new world record. Then there was a nice walk out to the observation post and I took several more photo's and a video of the surrounding area (360 degrees around). It was amazing. This is why people love Banff, although most of them come here in the summer when there is no snow around on the mountains. For that I think they are mad. It's a million times better turning around and around and seeing nothing but snow covered mountains all around you. Makes you feel wonderfully small and insignificant, and alive (dunno how that fits together, but it did at the time - very cool). And the other thing was was that I was about the ONLY damned person up there. Almost lunchtime and I was the only one up one of Banff's most amazing popular tourist destinations... how amazing is that.
A photo of some uber dude - how awesome is this shot I took of myself. haha!
After coming down the gondola a little later I asked how to get to the Hot Springs, another of Banff's big tourist attractions, and not far away, although the directions I got were a little suspect. I was told to walk up to these steps and follow the trail a bit. Well, the steps were ok, but the trail of snow was knee deep almost and it took some time to get where I was going. At one point I came across some nice deep snow, and found a ledge for the camera and put the timer on and threw myself into the snow. It was a bit shallower at that point and I didn't sink in as much as I had hoped, but it was still fun and I was giggline to myself for a good 15 minutes after that. Checkout my photos, there's one of me lying there in the snow haha good times. But as I was saying the directions I got were a bit didgy, because for all my overland snow-shoeing, I could've have just WALKED THROUGH THE CAR-PARK and it was on the other side. I suspect someone was laughing at me - bastards. haha No worries.
The Banff Upper Hot Springs were also pretty neat. I was told that they were having trouble with their pipes today and weren't open, but they weren't too sure (the same people at the gondola who gave me the directions..... hey!). Anyhow, I wandered over there and sure enough they were open, only just though. They had been open for 5 minutes, how lucky was I to get up late and mosey around. Good stuff. The waters were 40 degrees warm and were natural and stuff like that. I stuck around for 40 minutes because the sign said the recommended time for a soak was 20 minutes and I'm twice as hard as normal people, so I stayed twice as long. Actually it was full of really old fat people, and I was hanging out to see if any hot chicks would turn up. None did and after 40 minutes I looked enough like a skinny old person (re: wrinkly) that I decided to leave. And, as luck would have it a friggin MP / MT volleybal team decided to walk in just as I was walking out... goddammitt@@@!!!! hahaOnce again I had to laugh at myself. I get the good luck with some things and not with others... oh well Karma dude!
Anyhow back at HQ at the moment and have decided to go up to the mountain and get half a days skiing in tomorrow and go up to Norquay (which is one of the 3 ski areas in Banff). Check out -- http://www.banffnorquay.com/ tomorrow - you might see me on the webcams ahah doubt it because at 12pm tomorrow it's like 8am in NZ. I'm gonna try and catch the first shuttle up there at 8am and get busy! I have already rented my gear and it's here in my room now. So tomorrow, the plan is to get up there, and then waste a little time buying a day pass. This is my cunning tactic so that other people start to doa run or two before me and show me the way because I have oviously no idea which way to go... haha Anyhow, just doing some laundry at the moment, and will now update some photo's and stuff.
Catch you all tomorrow for when I update you on Canada's newest hotdog ski instructor - me ofcourse! haha
Cheers
Matt
PS - If you've read this far, then take a look at this little video I made at the top of Sulphur Mountain. I thought it was pretty awesome to be honest.
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