What a fabulous day. And I almost decided not to go to Lake Louise! After my lesson on Thursday I asked the instructor for his opinion of the conditions at Lake Louise, and he reinforced what I’d previously heard, that Lake Louise gets a lot of traffic and gets icy very quickly. Since it hasn’t snowed here in about a week, I figured a day in Lake Louise would be filled with nasty skidding and possibly painful crashes.

I’m glad I decided to go any way. On the way I took the scenic Bow Valley Parkway, which was beautiful. There were a couple of herds of elk in meadows on the way and I stopped briefly for a photo. On the way I was listening to the radio and heard about a Jimmy Rankin concert this evening at the Banff Centre. More about that later…

Once I’d arrived I hit the mountain. Lake Louise is really very big, with a large back bowl area and even a secondary mountain (actually the original resort) at the back. The main runs on the front were indeed very icy, but there were plenty of other options where the snow was good. And when I got to the back, I was really happy to find a massive wide-open black diamond area with plenty of great snow. Forget what everybody at Sunshine Valley was saying: Lake Louise is excellent!

I stopped at one of the mountain lodges to eat my lunch, called the Banff Centre and was able to get a ticket for the Rankin Concert…

In the afternoon I joined a Ski Friend tour of the mountain. Our designated Ski Friend was John, and he led three of us (including Jeff, a guy from my ski class at Sunshine the previous day) on a wonderful tour of some of the tougher bits of terrain. After some warmup runs we went down a steep chute into the back bowl. Taking a turn a bit awkwardly I fell, lost a ski and slid for quite a distance before stopping. My ski, which had somehow turned around so the brake was facing the wrong way, continued sliding below me and I had a wide time getting down to it. I’m glad I still had one ski to slow me down, or I would have ended up at the bottom of the valley! In the end I was a bit chastened but unharmed and ready to continue.

Finally the wonderful ski day came to an end and I went back to Banff, my hotel room, and a hot bath. After a quick dinner in town, I drove up to the Banff Centre for the concert. The Centre is a sprawling complex of buildings set on a hillside overlooking Banff. The Rankin concert was in the Margaret Greenham theatre, which turned out to be tiny. Total audience size: less than 250, which pretty much packed the place. Rankin mixed a couple of favourites from his family’s group (the Rankins, duh) with his current album’s tracks. He turned out to be quite a performer, and got everybody standing and clapping by the end. I bought the CD.

Tomorrow I’m off to Golden. I’ll be staying at Mary’s Motel overnight, then transferring to the Country Comfort Bed & Breakfast for three nights. Kicking Horse is supposed to have great skiing, with lots of powder… Here’s hoping!
posted by Tom at 11:34 AM | link |