Northern Rockies/Alberta ilovepugs goes to Banff/Revelstoke/Lake Louise

[ilovepugs]

Picking up from my brief description of Thursday. I guess the new snow burned DH’s legs out so he demanded a rest day.

Friday was pretty boring and honestly much needed downtime since we’ve been on a mountain or traveling since 2/23, when New England started getting its most recent stretch of storms. We walked around Mackenzie Street in town and bought stuff but more importantly I pet a bunch of shop dogs.

Saturday, our last day at Revelstoke. By that point I decided I wanted to switch to skis for a little bit just to give it a try in the buttery snow there. We took Critical Path off Stoke Chair over to Ripper Chair. Holy cow. Critical Path (a groomer) is marked blue on the trail map. It was quite steep. I had to stop mid-run a few times to relieve some of the feeling of vertigo. Meanwhile I saw little 5 year olds rip by. Well, my parents were refugees from a subtropical part of the world. It was not my destiny to learn how to ski as a child. At least I’m progressing as an adult. Towards the end of the run I skied off to the side of the trail and used some soft little bumps as brakes for my turns.

Critical Path:


After I made my way down we skied over to Ripper Chair, a gentler part of the mountain. A number of groomers there with some easy glades and one powder field called Simmer Down. My first time going across Simmer Down, I ejected from a ski. But the fluff was still fun so I ended up doing Burn Down to Simmer Down a few times while progressively getting more comfortable with the bumped up snow.

Anyhow it turns out that when you finally lean forward enough in your boots you’re more focused on the downhill and your GoPro tends to not capture many vistas, just footage of the snow directly in front of you. Here’s a photo dump of stills from video taken before I was warmed up and successfully out of the back seat:


The shadow of a Teletubby appears!

Peak and sub-peak at Revelstoke.

 

[ilovepugs]

Staying at Chateau Lake Louise for DH’s conference. Our room came with this view. Not directly over the lake, but pretty nice…


Drove from Sunshine back to Lake Louise after skiing yesterday. Saw this mountain en route, dubbed Minecraft Mountain for its blockiness.

 

[dbostedo]

Our room came with this view. Not directly over the lake, but pretty nice…

The car turned out to be a Lamborghini. It's not a Ferrari of course, but pretty nice...
This guy came over and gave me a solid bar of gold. Not exactly platinum, but pretty nice...
We flew on a private Embraer plane. Not really like it's a Gulfstream or anything, but pretty nice...
I won a free trip to Fiji. I mean, it's not Tahiti, but I guess it's pretty nice...

 

[ilovepugs]

@dbostedo Point taken

 

[Mel]

View attachment 195287
Drove from Sunshine back to Lake Louise after skiing yesterday. Saw this mountain en route, dubbed Minecraft Mountain for its blockiness.

Castle Mountain! It’s very distinctive looking. And totally different than Castle mountain ski resort, just to confuse everyone

 

[ilovepugs]

Castle Mountain! It’s very distinctive looking. And totally different than Castle mountain ski resort, just to confuse everyone

Yes!!!!! Thanks for identifying it!

 

[Tricia]

OK, first I have to tell you about the pancake making machine.

We got into Calgary airport last night. It’s easier to cross the border in our car than to go through customs in the airport, and there’s a direct flight from Montreal to Calgary. We drove an hour and a half to Banff and stayed at the Canalta Lodge. It’s a bit out of the main part of town but it was really cute. I prefer to be closer walking distance to things when staying in Banff but we were just making a stop to sleep on the way to Revelstoke, so it was perfect.

Anyway, breakfast was included with our room. It was pretty good for hotel breakfast buffet. The most exciting part was the pancake machine though:

View attachment 194165

You just press a button and two perfect pancakes come out! I’ve never seen anything like this.

Paging @Andy Mink

@ilovepugs Awesome trip report!

 

[Andy Mink]

The most exciting part was the pancake machine though:

Those things are cool! There's one in the hotel we've stayed in at Thanksgiving Point, UT.

 

[ilovepugs]

Those things are cool! There's one in the hotel we've stayed in at Thanksgiving Point, UT.

We’re living in the future! 3D printed food!

 

[ilovepugs]

Hello fellow earthlings. We are still away from home. My dog/house sitter is nearly ready to walk off the job. My dogs are called the “hounds of heck” for a reason.

Anyway, on Sunday, as mentioned above, we met up with @Mel at Sunshine Village. I first met Mel all of…..3? 4? months ago (ahem, on my last visit to Banff) and bonded instantly with her over her love of animals and fun. It was very cold on Sunday and by golly despite my best efforts I am probably in the wrong boots.

We skied Little Bunkers off Mt Standish for warmup, then headed up Lookout Mountain on the Great Divide lift. Mel took us to a very gentle bump field which was fine but she and DH skied it in like 1.5 minutes to my 15. I declined to go down Red 40 because the drop in was icy and yucky and had to suffer going the long way around on the Green Run which involved some poling and herringboning. Trudge trudge, huff huff.

We took the heated bubble lift Teepee Town LX (the LX stands for Luxury) and did another run off Lookout Mountain, at which point I admitted like a baby that my toes were cold because I forgot to charge the batteries for my socks and I wanted lunch.

Lunch was really good and I gave away a sticker of my golden retriever on skis to our server.

Afterwards DH split off and Mel and I did some gentle runs off Strawberry Express in consideration of my poor feet, then a lap down Tincan Alley off Wawa, a run off Jackrabbit (one of @Jenny ’s favorite lifts at SSV) and headed down to Wolverine lift, which hosts my current favorite pod of trails (they have lots of trees on the sides…kinda like in New England, eh). We did multiple laps of Bluebell, a blue groomer, before ultimately calling it around 3:30 and making our way back to the village via Teepee Town and the World Cup Downhill run.



It was a great day despite the cold!

 

[ilovepugs]

Here are some pictures of food that they served at the Chateau and of the Chateau Lake Louise itself. I had to work remotely Monday through Wednesday so I didn’t downhill ski on Monday, took a break on Tuesday and went whee on the classic cross country track on the lake, and then only did one downhill run on Wednesday because DH forced me to get out and get some sunshine since he knew I was getting crabby.


Smoked salmon on toast


Spanish egg cocette



Afternoon tea overlooking the lake - a tradition for me



Brioche French toast


Cinnamon bun the size of my head with cream cheese frosting


The ski hill is plainly visible in the background

 

[ilovepugs]

DH is suffering from the man flu or something. We have a red eye back East departing about 1am. Rather than loitering in public we rented an airport hotel room for a grand total of, what, 4 hours! College me would have found it inconceivable. They gave me some chocolate dipped strawberries and champagne though. I guess that’s how you know I’m “Elite”… in this hotel loyalty program.

Thursday was an interesting day. It was the start of DH’s man flu so we nixed our plan to borrow spikes from the hotel to visit Johnson Canyon and I ended up going to Lake Louise ski resort by myself for a few runs to soak up the sun.

On my first lift ride I sat with a young woman who was in a local ski club and chatted with her about her career. She was on a gap year after high school doing race training and hoped to make it on to the provincial - then national ski team. We talked about Canada’s underinvestment in developing ski racers and the amazing wins of Grenier and St Germain. She was a course volunteer at the most recent World Cup men’s downhill race at Lake Louise and did some of the side slipping. How fun!

On another lift ride, I sat with a trio up Glacier Express. Someone mentioned something something about a high speed quad linking Sugarbush with Glen Ellen and I said — wait, are you from Vermont?? Indeed they were from Middlebury, and the owners of the Swift House Inn. And then I said — wait, are you in that BIPOC in VT Facebook group??? Small world, indeed.

On yet another lift ride, I rode up with a young man who was clearly a new-ish skier. He grew up in Calgary and moved out to Lake Louise after university to do IT for the resort because he had never lived in the countryside before. I was kind of bored lapping blue groomers (not a lot of snow meant icy ungroomed stuff) and he mentioned that he had never been up the Top of the World lift, so I said “Wanna buddy??” And off we went. I took him across Sunset Terrace and then brought him over to Upper Wixwaxy, coaching him on how to traverse across stuff that he didn’t feel comfortable going down. He wedged part of the way. I couldn’t restrain myself and started coaching him on pole plants, timing, and getting forward down the fall line (because I’m such an expert…yeah…). Anyway by the end his turns were much more regular and he looked noticeably better. I was so proud of him!!

Sometime in the midst of my entertaining lift interactions I missed a turn and ended up overterraining myself on a black tree run. I alternated side slips, butt scoots and the occasional freaked out turn. I lived! I think I would’ve been able to do it without the butt scooting, technically, but I just didn’t have the confidence since I was solo and my adductors were still kinda sore from cross country skiing.

Anyway by the time my impromptu ski lesson was over I was hungry and went back to the hotel for some deluxe boozy hot chocolate and pasta. Yum.

Here’s an obligatory photo of the view from Lake Louise since it never gets old: