Day two in Banff, Alberta.
One of my key objectives for this trip is to get a good crack at the major ski resorts in western Canada. Staying in Banff is a great start: there are three ski resorts within easy driving distance, and my lift pass is good at all three. They are: Banff @ Mount Norquay, Sunshine Valley, and Lake Louise.

Yesterday I started off early from Calgary with a stop at Starbucks. The drive up to Banff was beautiful, with just a couple of light clouds crowning the mountains under the morning sunshine. I stopped off at my hotel, a rather nondescript low budget motel off at the wrong end of the main road, and then continued on to Sunshine, which had been recommended by Dave and Sue. This turned out to be a good place to start. Sunshine is not a large resort, and had nothing to compare to Whistler or Jackson, but below the treeline it had some great snow and great runs. Unfortunately, the wind that apparently had been blowing since the last big snowfall mid last week was still blowing. In addition to the contribution this made to the cold at the top of the runs, the wind had also blown a lot of the snow off where the runs were exposed above the treeline. Once I made it below the icefields, though, I really enjoyed the lower portions of the hill, particularly on the last section of my day, which I spent on Goat's Eye mountain. I even managed a few runs down a double-black run, which was exhilarating!

This morning I changed direction and went to the closest resort, Banff @ Mount Norquay. Smaller than Sunshine, I suspect Mount Norquay's ski-able area is much smaller than Blue Mountain in Ontario, but what a view! From the top of the leftmost chair there is a fantastic panorama over the town of Banff and the spectacular mountains around it. The clouds and most of the wind from Monday had cleared off and the day was clear and bright with sunshine. Unfortunately, many of the runs I wanted to try were closed with avalanche warnings, so that leftmost chair only led to two runs, both steep and covered in tough mogels. However, the snow was very good and I enjoyed a few hours of bumps (with slowly improving technique and comfort, and rapidly tiring muscles) before moving on to the runs served by the other lifts. Here the news was not as good: the lack of recent powder, and the much greater number of skiers, had reduced the other blacks and blues to sheer granite-like hardpacked snow, basically indistinguishable from ice as far as my ski edges could tell. I scraped my way down a half dozen runs in search of something worth exploring, but gave up and took an early end to the day to return to the town and a hot bath.

Banff seems to be a wonderful little place. The people here are very friendly, prices are refreshing in comparison to Jackson, and there's a breathtaking view in every direction. I know there's a lot of pressure to increase the size of the town, strictly limited by the National Park surrounding it, but I'm glad that it's small and can be covered easily by foot. More people would crowd these little ski resorts and take some of the wildness from the magic mountains around them.

Just one other note: I watched the figure skating last night and had my evening ruined by the seemingly fixed judging that favoured the Russians over Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, who skated a brilliant and flawless programme. I hope some changes for the better occur in this damaged sport, but can't imagine how that could be made to happen. I can't agree with Rex Murphy who seems to think this is the worst thing possible for the Olympics as a whole. But it's a shame, and I guess the best thing to be taken from this event is this: after years of disappointments on the brink of gold, we Canadians know that this time our skaters were the best. Even if the official results don't reflect that fact.

Tomorrow I'll go back to Sunshine for a lesson (need to learn how to absorb the bumps instead of skiing around them) and Thursday I'll wrap up this portion of my trip with a visit to Lake Louise. So far, so great!
posted by Tom at 11:33 AM | link |