It was a smooth trip from SF to Calgary, through immigration and into our little Nissan Rogue SUV in lightning speed. It was a beautiful drive from Calgary west into the mountains in the setting sun, we chatted on the way about the fact that it was almost exactly 10 years from when we visited for Lisa’s 30th birthday in 2009. Boy, time flies… Our little room in the newly renovated Canalta Lodge was great, a nice 15 minute walk to downtown Banff with a liquor store on the way that was open until 1:00AM each night (score!). Banff downtown is a great strip to cruise, so much outdoor clothing and gear to gawk at, with no shortage of souvenir stores and a huge variety of eateries. We visited the Banff Avenue Brewing Company on our first night in town, it was opened shortly after we last visited so was fun to try something new. Great beers, awesome service and a really fun atmosphere. And their buffalo chicken sandwich is pretty much the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever had!
One of the reasons we made our Canada visit into a bit of a road trip was the fact that we can ski at so many resorts on the Ikon Passes we have this winter. We started at Banff Sunshine which is a quick 20 minute drive out of downtown Banff. We were up on one of the first gondolas for a day of cold weather under bluebird skies. Last time we visited Banff there were a few Aussies about the place, but since then it seems they’ve moved west from Whistler and absolutely inundated the western Alberta ski resorts. We shared our gondola with two Aussies who – given is was Australia Day – were chugging beers and stoned out of their minds by 9:00AM. Way to give foreigners a good impression of Australians, fellas… The cold temps in the weeks leading up to our visit kept the snow at Banff Sunshine very nice, we buzzed groomers and bump runs all day enjoying all the natural features and alpine-level skiing the resort has to offer. Even managed to find a few untouched powder stashes here and there!
We tried Park Distillery – another newer establishment – on night two. A spot that could be plucked right out the SF Mission district, it was a little uppity for me (although Lisa liked it) but the food was very good. We’d shared the hot tub with a couple of local Calgary girls earlier in the day and they mentioned a spirits festival being held downtown that evening, so following dinner we sampled some of the fun cocktails from local distilleries at the marquees lining Bear Street before having a late night beer at Earl’s.
The girls from the hot tub also mentioned the annual Lake Louise ice sculpturing festival, so on our way to ski Lake Louise the next day we headed for the famous Fairmont Chateau to see the sculptures. It was absolutely dumping with snow for our drive west to Lake Louise, huge flakes and some white knuckle driving along Trans Canada 1. The sculptures were very impressive and worth the drive, the detail in some of them was amazing and the main castle set on the lake was quite a sight to behold.
We headed for the back side trees at Lake Louise, managing to score some fresh tracks following the snowfall the night before. Louise hadn’t received as much snow as Sunshine so we had to pick and choose runs, but had lots of fun cruising the Top of the World chair before cutting the day short to make it to Revelstoke before the sun set. Very fun start to our Canada ski week!
High resolution version of the vid is here.
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