Lake Louise, Canada

Still a bit behind with this little tale of ours, but for our latest installment I'd like to tell you about our time in Lake Louise. Is everybody sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

Let's see now, from Seattle we took the bus to Vancouver in search of skis. We'd managed to convince ourselves that buying new skis was probably the best thing to do in the long run. Or rather, I'd managed to convince Jen that I deserved to buy new skis, and also that snowblades in deep snow weren't a good idea so she needed skis too. And very happy we are with our new purchases (for those that are interested, I've got the K2 Seth Vicious in 169cm and Jen has Rossignol Scratch Pros in 138cm), pictured below on the Paradise Chair at Lake Louise...

So from Vancouver we managed to catch the Greyhound bus the same day we arrived for the 17 hour trip to Lake Louise which left at 12.45 am. Not a trip we were looking forward to, but the train that I'd planned on taking actually went to Jasper rather than Banff and cost over 300 dollars each, so the bus it would have to be.

Thanks Col. So after many uncomfortable hours on the greyhound bus we're dropped off in a small car park and ask directions to Lake Louise village only to discover that we we're already in it; all 4 shops worth. Luckily one of those shops is a ski shop so we get bindings fitted on the lovely new skis and go off to a rather luxury looking hostel. Here's the view of the river by the hostel..

nice innit.

Now the more observant of you might notice the river is frozen. Well it would be, its FREEZING in Lake Louise. In fact its much much less than freezing it's averaging minus 25 and all the hairs in my nostrils were frozen solid which feels pretty wierd. Plus with the wind chill it gets down to minus 40! Take a look at this...

Needless to say I was dressed as a michellin man for most of the time.

So, what did we do in Lake Louise, apart from the actual sliding down mountains? We watched professionals slalom down a pretty steep course at a million miles an hour, we slid down a hill in the dark sat on plastic sledges and blow-up boats (arriving at the bottom like fully grown snowmen), Col won 2 bars of chocolate in the Hostel Pool tournament (i.e. he won the tournament - the old magic is still there), we drank a lot of hot chocolate and tried to defrost every now and again.

But for most of the time I felt like I was on the 'Top of the World, ma, top of the world'...

Anyone recognise that nose?

After a week it was time to move on. We packed up our bags and in the wait for the next greyhound outta town (Greyhounds make a special habit of leaving at ridiculous times) we took a walk to the Lake itself. When I say walk, I of course mean hike. Do you know how difficult it is to walk in snow for hours up hill? After the first ten minutes of oohing and ahhing at how pretty the trees are and how great the sound of snow crunching underfoot is, you begin to wonder if you've accidentally taken the long route to the Lake... which of course we had ;-)

The lake is the white thing in the background with people standing on it.

So that ends our little story about Lake Louise, next stop Fernie. See you there!