Banff Gondola

On Friday it was -25oC up the mountain, so our planned skiing trip was quickly scrapped and a new plan was made.  We went up the Banff Gondola which took us up to the top of Sulphur Mountain.  It was a perfect day to go too because the sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

 The tiny mountain in the bottom middle part of the picture is Tunnel Mountain.  It's so tiny!

The gondola takes 8 minutes to reach the summit of Sulphur Mountain, reaching an elevation of 2281m (7486ft).  At the summit there is a 1km walkway called the Banff Skywalk, which took us along the summit ridge and leads to the Cosmic Ray Station and Sanson's Peak Meteorological Station.  Sanson's peak was named in honour of Norman Sanson, the observer who tended the recording equipment for nearly 30 years, and had to make countless trips to the top of this peak to check/mend the equipment.  The little hut that he would stay in sometimes really didn't seem very warm!  The views from the walkway were just breathtaking.  Even now the photos we took don't seem to give it justice!  It was just amazing!!  We're definitely going to go back up in late May when the snow will have melted, just to see what a difference it makes.  Also in the summer its much more likely we'll see some wildlife, i.e. golden eagles, goats and marmots.

I took a video of the mountains from the summit to try to show the 360oC view that we had...

Last weekend was family day weekend, an Alberta holiday, which meant working a crazy number of hours for me.  I think it is also half term, so this week Nick has had to work a lot too!  Hopefully next week we'll be back to normal and have plenty of time to do some fun things.  I really want to go to the Columbia Icefields (but it doesn't open until April), and at some point we're thinking of going to Revelstoke skiing because we've heard some great reviews of the resort.  I think its about 4 hours away depending on the weather.  We've been in Canada now for 4 months, and time has gone so quickly.  There's a few books on Canada in our house, so we've been doing a little research on what we'd still like to still see and places to go.

Kicking Horse

I see its been over a month since we last updated our blog, and plenty has happened in that time...  Firstly Nick's dad Tim came out to visit on the 10th Jan, and Nick is going to write all about that soon.  It was fun packed week of skiing and eating!!

Mum and Dad gave me some money for my birthday, so I decided to spend it on a mini skiing trip to Kicking Horse, which is a ski resort in Golden, BC.  On the way there we stopped at Lake Louise and were able to see some of the ice sculptures which have been carved lately at the ice festival.

In Kicking Horse we stayed in a B&B called the Highland Lodge, with a great room featuring a jacuzzi tub, a really comfy bed with a goose down duvet and a great view onto the mountains.  We even got breakfast included, which we didn't know until the first morning - smoked salmon, scrambled egg and spinach filo pastry parcel things.  The first thing we did when entering the room was to see who could fit in the wooden chest at the end of the bed... of course!

I chose this lodge because it had a scottish pub attached to it which boasted it served haggis, and as we were going over Burns Night I thought that that would be a lovely treat.  However, on dining the first night in the pub and asking the Australian waitress where the haggis was, and her not even knowing the word haggis, we concluded that some sketchy advertising had been going on!

The ski hill was great, with all the slopes being a lot steeper than we were used too from Sunshine (where we usually go in Banff), and there were about 3 bowls to ski too.  Something that was a novelty was that in the middle of the slopes there was a bear called Boo, who was fenced off by an electric fence.  We saw from the gondola that some crazy boarder had decided to venture inside to get at fresh powder.  Nick also nearly ventured in there when taking a wrong turn over a cliff edge and ended up stuck in a glade of very closely nit trees!  Luckily this time I wasn't following him.  I managed to do my first double black diamond run, which was like skiing off the edge of a drop, it was so steep!  I was very proud of myself as I had never done anything that hard before.  On the second day some of Nick's work colleagues came to Kicking Horse, so we skied with them in the afternoon.  This day was really really warm and the sun was out, it was just like spring skiing!  

At the end of the day we raced from the top to the bottom, with the loser buying the round of drinks... I stupidly decided to take the mogul field... unsurprisingly I was the loser!  Nick boasted how he'd had time to go through the ski park and had still won.  

On the third day the visibility was a lot poorer, and our legs were pretty tired so we were glad to just take it easy.  Our planned bus back was cancelled due to lack of numbers, so we had to get the Grey Hound.  After hearing stories from Nick about his past experiences of the Grey Hound (smelly drunks and the like), I wasn't too excited about the prospect, but it wasn't bad at all.

Since our trip away, we've mainly just been working, with Nick doing his instructing on Saturday's as well.  He seems to be really enjoying it.  A few nights ago we went ice skating to the Fairmont Hotel with Chris and Sabrina.  There were some ice hockey sticks there so we had a go at that.  I found I could only turn in one direction!  After we went to a nearby pub for hot chocolate to warm up.

Last week was a week of eating for us.  On tuesday night I went out with some girls from work for dinner, followed by dinner with Nick on wednesday night at my hotel.  On thursday night we went for Chinese New Year dinner and games at Nick's colleagues Shell and Ben's place.  They made all the chinese food from scratch, which was so yummy!  We haven't had chinese since we left the UK, so was a great treat.  After we played Pictionary and Charades for hours, which got sillier as the beer flowed.  The following day, with a bit of hangover, Ben and Shell took us to Norquay to teach us snow boarding.  This ended up being harder than predicted and rather dangerous.  I'm pretty sure I was knocked unconscious, and we both got home with sore necks, heads, knees, wrists...  Nick shoved a cushion down his trousers to protect this bum, and I didn't bother as I have plenty of padding :-)  Its fair to say we're still slightly sore today, and thats 4 days later!  Nick is going up to Norquay tomorrow for work, so I'm thinking I might join him and give boarding another go now that the pain has subsided and I've forgotten how bad I felt on saturday.