Best Western Rocky Mtn House Rocky Mountain House

Well, I got my wisdom teeth out and everything went very well.  The Dentist didn't realize I am going to be leaving so soon so after I told him I am leaving on the 6th, he got on dat. I got a local anesthetic, so i was awake for it all, and I don't see what the big fuss is about getting your wisdom teeth out, it was a breeze.  Then again I could have been VERY lucky, I will ...

My friend Don and I used to be co-workers. His wife is Canadian and wanted to move back to Canada so Don retired and they now live in a rural area of Alberta where Don is establishing his career as a sculptor. I was excited to be invited to visit and was really looking forward to seeing his studio and his work. Unfortunately (for you) he asked me not to take pictures of his works in ...

... touristy town just outside the entrance to Kootenay National Park. I stop at the entrance to the park to pay the entry fee then proceed through narrow canyon walls into the park. There are periodic rain showers but I prepared for that probability when I left camp so I keep going. The overwhelming, and very sad impression I'm left with of Kootenay is kilometer after kilometer (I'm in Canada -- everything's in metrics) mountainside after mountainside covered with dead trees. I ...

Hey There Everyone, Well I am not usually accustomed to waiting so long between entries but these past couple of months have been pretty crazy. Well I will start from back in Uganda. We had an amazing time there as a team ministering in churches, schools, with street boys, in communities, etc. We also had the opportunity to do a bit of sightseeing on our days off which was nice. We went to the equator, the source of the nile ...

... snow and is also famous for being the gorby capital of the world (I'll explain later). Personally, after skiing it for a day, I think that Sunshine is completely over-rated - it seems to be a mixture of very short steeper runs and then loads and loads of flats. Most of it is above the treeline so it is pretty bleak on top too, particularly when the wind blows. That said, there ...

... it didn't hurt (too much). Lake Louise has been really busy as it is UK half-term so there are loads of really bad English skiers clogging up the pistes (how quickly do we get into a locals mentality). This gave us the opportunity of helping to help the ski school teach some lessons over the weekends. Sarah had an interesting one looking after 7 kids - all one of which wanted to do was eat snow all afternoon. Still ...

... you all the time and sometimes even making notes. Our group was 4 of us from the IA combined with 2 lads from Base Camp group - Jacko and Huggie (so named after the nappies brand because he wet himself one night whilst sleeping on the sofa in our lobby). Base Camp is a similar set-up to our own International Academy but doesn't seem to be as good. They stay in a bit of a grotty hostel, locally called The Crack House, with 6 people in each room, and it's ...

This is our last week before our CSIA Level 1 exams next week so everyone in the International Academy is desperate to soak up as much knowledge as possible from our new instructors this week. Sarah has a really nice English girl, Alex, and my group has local boy, Spunky Duncan. We all spent most of the week perfecting our Fast Track To Parallel lessons - mobility, sliding, stopping, turning and linking. There were still a few ...

Temperature watch: a lovely and toasty -15°C this week (well, it's all relative isn't it). Lessons were quite hard work this week. We have spent the whole week with our new French instructor, Patrick, learning how to teach people who have never seen a pair of skis before which way round to put a ski on and then from there all the way up to parallel skiing. Over and over and over again. Having not done a snowplough (or wedge as ...

Thankfully the temperature has warmed up to a tropical -20°C for week 2. On the skiing side, the snow has been awesomely good this week. Off-piste there is still plenty of powder and most of the pistes are groomed at nights so it's great for carving down the blues, greens and downhill runs at high speed. They don't tend to groom the black diamonds or double-blacks so there are some pretty good ...