This is a nice little pic of the Banff township at night. It seems to a be a very Christmassy little winter village thing going on. Very quaint :-)
So I hired some ski's, boots and poles for a grand total of $21 for the day hehe, and carried them back to the hotel where they had a special room for me to store them. Very nice. Anyhow I was up at 6:30am, and I found that the hotel's restaurant had opened early (they weren't open yesterday) and so, as there was no one to serve me, I sort of just helped myself to a whole plate of hot sausages and croissants hehe. I scoffed a plateful down, and then got some cornflakes and toast, and then the waiter spotted me and came over and I said I was there for a continental breakfast hehe. So I got away nicely with that ;-). After that I caught a shuttle up to the ski field called Norquay (the Banff township has 3 ski-fields) and it was the first day of the season for Norquay so there was hardly anyone around. (Only 3 of us on the shuttle at 8am). Anyhow afte ra 5 minute bus ride we were there and I got a lift pass from the office and put some stuff in a locker and I was off. I was the 2nd person on the slopes that morning. The 1st guy was just in front of me on the chairs but he was a much better skier and I had no idea of where to go so I just followed him a bit. I had machine groomed powdery trails pretty much to myself all day. I did all the green trails for the first 45 minutes to get my rhythm going as I hadn't skied for about 2 years. But after that I was off onto the blue trails. I skied pretty much non stop for about 4.5 hours and eventually I was pretty tired out. My legs were starting to quiver and buckle a bit and I was glad when 1:30pm came around so that I could go back to the lodge, have a quick bite and catch the 2pm shuttle back to the hotel in Banff town. It was and awesome days skiing. The quality of the snow, the powder and the runs left me in no doubt that this was much better than anything we have in New Zealand. I have a few photos of some of the blues runs I did. Unfortunately they don't look as steep as when you are actually standing on top of the damn hill. Man I saw at least 4 people start out, and then decided it was too hard and try to climb back up the hill hehe.
The blue run at Norquay. This first part as a huge drop (well over 45 degrees). I went hard and showed no fear! haha
I just put my iPod on and cranked out the music and barreled down the hill. I only wiped out a million times, but it was only when I went into the 2 FOOT DEEP powder!!! haha It was crazy, I've never seen powder like that, and had no idea on how to ski it... so I just kept falling over in it... it was hellishly fun! Had a great day and might do another day's skiing in Jasper in a few days time.
Well I caught the transfer bus over to Lake Louise. It's a funny little place. Again, it's surrounded by mountains, and most of the buildings are actually great big hotels or motor inns. They have a little mall of about 12 shops in 3 buildings but things are quite spaced out and takes a little investigation if you don't know where you are going. I didn't and tonight I walked int eh wrong direction for about 1.5 kilometres and took a few photos of the landscape (a cunning attempt at me trying not to show I didn't know where the hell I was going).
Anyhow, got a nice meal of ribs for dinner and went to bed and had a read. The pub was going off last night and my room is right by it. The hotel was chocker-block with skier and it sounds like there was the national training team (or two) there last night as that's all that everyone could talk about. I had about 4 beers, but after the day i had had, it felt like about 40. So I went to bed and did some reading. I couldn't really sleep (over-tired I think) and eventually fell asleep at around 1am.
But tomorrow was another day of stupid things I was to do in Canada hahaha so you then.
Matt
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