Lake Louise
Trip Start
Apr 02, 2008
1
4
19
Trip End
May 20, 2008
Lake Louise,
Alberta,
Canada
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
At the end where we arrived the Fairmont Chateau sits next to the lake, this was the posh part of our trip so we stayed there on a good deal. The hotel is stunning inside and our room was very comfortable, overlooking the lake, right in the middle of the top floor. We got very lucky with our room. The pool and hot tub were really great, we used them a few times.
Bow Valley.
After check-in we headed straight out onto the lake for ice skating. It was simply amazing. We were out there for ages and for a lot of the time we had the rink to ourselves. At Christmas they build an ice castle in the middle and it's outline was still there, it's huge! The sun was out and it was really peaceful out there.
We headed in for a swim and then straight out to do the very last sleigh ride of the season! The trail is melting by now so we were very lucky and got in on the very last ride on the last day. When we started out it was nicely sunny, with the sun behind the mountains. We rode round the side of the lake to the far end where we could get a better look at the Victoria glacier and some frozen ice falls. We went out on top of the lake for a stop. We could see the Fairmont at the far end, the views were really beautiful. Then a snow storm started, it was really heavy and when it got going we could no longer see the far end of the lake, we couldn't even see much in front of us. We rode back in the snow which was pretty cool. It's not like British snow, it's reasonably dry and tiny flakes but comes on really fast.
We enjoyed dinner in the hotel and went to bed early so we could get up for our snowboarding lesson the next morning! We had a full day beginners lesson and it turned out we were the only two in the group, so effectively we got a private lesson (which are way more expensive). We started off on a lower level and learned the basics, going down forward and backward and moving across the slope. In the afternoon we went higher up and managed to learn turns. Mhairi found it all pretty terrifying and although managed a few good turns, spent quite a lot of time picking herself back up. Definitely could not manage to get off the T-bar without falling over, very frustrating. Scott thought, hmm I am very good at this. Overall we did really well and it was great fun, though we spent the next few days in quite a lot of pain.
Thats it for Lake Louise, it was such an amazing place and we'd love to go back there in the summer, it would be completely different. From there we headed up the Icefield Parkway to Jasper.
