Today we awoke early, and and got ready to head up to Lake Louise skiifield. Craig, the owner of the hostel, had offered to take us skiing, and show us around the mountain.
The Snow report told us that there had been 17cm new snow overnight, which was very exciting! We packed up our gear, and stepped out the door. Silly me, didn’t even think that 17cm on the field meant we would likely have snow too, and there’s a chance it was over 17cm! I stepped out of the house, and was exceptionally surprised that there was Snow all over the cars, snow all over the steps and snow everywhere!
We piled into the van, and zoomed off over the snow covered roads to Lake Louise skifield, only 20 minutes drive away! Talk about convenient. There was snow everywhere, and we sorted ourselves out and managed to get on the lifts before 9am. It snowed most of the day.
The runs were ridiculous, it was everything I had dreamed of, boarding in Canada. There was powder, there were trees, and we got to go swoosh swoosh through them, with powder flying everywhere. There were times it was so deep, you just floundered around if you fell over, and one time I almost got sucked in by a tree – a depression forms around the trunk, but the snow keeps getting higher, and if you fall down by the trunk it can be very hard to get out, especially if you go headfirst! I got stuck near a tree, but luckily only a small one. Only crashed into one other tree that I remember, so that’s good.
My app told me we boarded over 21km today, quite a distance! And I didn’t even track all the runs. I’m sure we’re gonna have sore everything tomorrow, but it was epic and amazing.
As if that wasn’t enough for the day, Craig texted me just after dark, to let me know there was a herd of elk wandering through the snow near the house. I could see them out the window. We threw our snow gear back on, and crept around the snow piles to look at them. They wander around town at night some times, apparently. The are quite large, but wander relatively easily through quite deep snow. In some places, you couldn’t see their legs, just their body, as the snow is so deep. They were scraping the snow away to get at the grass below, and delicately nibbling the trees. Some had pawed away an amount of snow in a circle, and then sat down in the hole they had made, so only their heads were visible above the snow. Perhaps this is warm for them!
It was very hard to get any photos, as it was dark.
Dale and Becca 