Day 6 Lake Louise

GUESS WHAT?????!!!  That's right up early again, two days in a row - remarkable!!  Dressed in ski gear, we made our way to the Chateau to hire cross country skis.  Now for those of you who have down hill skied you will appreciate that ski boots are heavy, uncomfortable boots that lock your ankle in place.  NOT these boots, light, warm and easy to walk in - who knew???

Wearing our comfy boots and carrying our skis and poles we walked the short distance to the Nordic Hut.  This is where we met Jeff, our instructor for the morning and also our guide for the Cross Country Ski Tour we had booked for the afternoon.  Jeff was in the midst of preparing his high performance nordic skis for our lesson, and we discussed various travel stories whilst waiting for the other 2 people who were booked in to join us.

Jeff and his girlfriend had recently driven his jeep from Lake Louise to Argentina (8 months of driving).

Kerry and Adrian (a couple from Western Australia) joined us, we collected our gear and headed out for our first lesson of Nordic Cross Country Skiing.

Elona typing

Now this is very different to your down hill skiing and takes a little more effort and skill. We did our drills and at times had a rope around our waists to pull Jeff along - he maintained that this was to keep our postures correct - hhhmmmm not so sure about this but the boy was NOT light I'm telling you! But fun was had by all and some hilarious falls but we learnt a new mantra -"forward, forward gliiiide". Jeff told us that we were ready for the tour in the afternoon after an hour and a half of lesson. Whoooo hooo - okay!!!!! Jeff informed us that it would just be us on the tour and that we needed to rest and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! So that's we did and walked back to the lodge to do what seemed like the never ending blog. Getting behind can be a little tiresome but it is all worthwhile in the end - so you tell us anyway. Please keep up the comments as this gives us motivation to continue because when you are sitting by the fire in a lovely warm lodge - a book and a hot chocolate with Baileys seems like such a better option at times. Having said that we did NOT hydrate with that I promise!

Right so after a good rest and of course the hydrating we walked back to the Nordic Hut where the lovely Jeff was ready and waiting. On went the skis. Now if you had been following this blog you will know that we have experienced many avalanches and the area itself has had the worst cases of avalanches for over 30 years. I'm telling you this because the people who would normally be grooming tracks etc were snowed in and unable to come to work therefore we completed 3/4 of the tour without trails - this is the hard way to go but definitely a learning experience so when low and behold over the hill came the grooming guys even Jeff got excited (maybe we were going a little too slow for him!) and from this point on it was just delightful. This is a sport that just really needs practice practice practice but we are running out of time but we will try and get in a cross country trail on the lake on Monday as the Ice Festival is on this weekend and we really want to see the ice carving!!

Jeff was very happy with our progress and our bodies were ready to have a wee rest after the 3 hour trek!! We had covered Politics, Religion and Sex on our trek as well and of course the inevitable discussion about 'Rangas' because the lovely lad Jeff was as ginger as they come and of course we all know the colour of the beautiful locks of Megs. Did you know they have "Kick a Ginger Day" in the States? Unbelievable!!! Jeff also told us that we might want to hide whilst the ice festival is on as it's a zoo with the amount of people that turn up for the event. We, at the moment are lucky to run into more than 10 people so we were in for a change.

Un-groomed Trail - our tracks from behind

Jeff putting outer jackets into backpack - 

as we said this is a little more energetic than down hill skiing 

and we now understand why the cross countriers where less!

View from trail

Jeff - our Ranga!

Elona gliding - fast

See how proficient we are?

Elona double poling (work those abs)

Homeward bound

Megs and Jeff

Day 5 Lake Louise

Yes we managed to get ourselves up and out of the Lodge by 8am and headed off to the Chateau to meet our next guide: the beautiful Bruce - he has a Ned Flanders air about him (this by the way was pointed out to us by another guide!) Not religious but just soooo verrrry nice - you know? Your favourite uncle that you just love to hear stories from. Wearing a more traditional guide attire - check out the photos - he drove us to Johnston Canyon which is heading East towards Banff passing Castle Mountain and gorgeous views of Pilot Mountain. Getting a little history along the way - like passing over the railway that runs from coast to coast in Canada and the little towns that sprung up from the making of said tracks etc. It was just after this that both Bruce and I (being in the front seat) spied a moose in - would you believe - Moose Meadows!!!! Very exciting moment and Bruce being the expert guide he is reversed the car to a good vantage point and gave us binoculars to better see what he called a young male with small antlers - he was bloody big to us but hey he's the guide!!! After a few moments we moved on and about 10 minutes we arrived at our destination of Johnston Canyon. It was a balmy -24 degrees celsius outside the van when we attached these little rubber soles with spikes to our boots to head off at a very spritely pace (who knew he'd be an energetic bunny???) Passing some gorgeous terrain and scenery and another tour party!!!! Seriously this man could walk - people whinge about how fast I walk - nothing on this man I'm telling you!

Megs Typing

To avoid the crowds and believe me it was getting crowded with tour groups that had come in from Banff for the walk.  Again we were very lucky and it was just the three of us.  As I was saying to avoid the crowds we passed by the other tour groups and at Bruce's suggestion hiked to the upper falls (larger tour groups don't usually get that far) where we stopped at the look out there and had tea and poppy seed cake.  The view from the upper falls is incredible and you can see where the ice climbers and absailers had their anchor ropes secured around some of the larger trees at the top of the falls.  The blue colouring that appear in some of the ice formations, is a result of the the ice becoming so thick in these area that the ice refracts the blue light of the colour spectrum and thus appear blue. It does add majesty to the frozen water falls.  The other surprising fact was that the water falls were still falling under the frozen sheets of ice, the top layers freeze when the temperature falls, but as the original water is sourced from hot springs it continues to run the course underneath the blanket of ice on top.

After we had our fill of the upper falls view as well as tea and cake, we continued to the more popular sections of the canyon the lower falls.  Just as magnificent - please see photos.

4 hours after our arrival we headed back to the van and returned to the Chateau, we did stop off at Moose Meadows to see if the moose was still about, unfortunately he had moved on. Time to have a late lunch and return to the lodge for some down time and prepare ourselves for Cross Country tomorrow.

Nice to see the sun - now that's not necessarily because we tend

to rise from our beds later either ladies and gentlemen!!

The sun is usually obscured by the snow clouds

So seeing the sun rise like this is just lovely

You could almost feel the warmth - sort of - it was neg 24 remember!

Railway that runs all the way to the East Coast

Moose Meadow

Ah Ha Moose 

Pilot Mountain

Cleets

Trail

View above us

View Below

and up again - this is limestone - it was the original coral

reef back in it's time

Hot underground springs keep this water running

some in areas that you can see it

As you can see - there are gaps to see the water moving

Behind the wall of ice  is a running waterfall

You can actually here it - just beautiful

Elona and view

View from Lower Falls

View from Upper Falls

As is this - the ice falls here are used by climbers a lot apparently

hard to see height - look on!

There we go - that's half way!

Notice this tree has an anchor for the absailers

Thank god for zoom!

Megs and Ice Falls

Elona Ice Falls

The Beautiful Bruce - look at that jumper and hat - bless him!

This is what is at the bottom of the shots above and apparently they join up to make 

an entire sheet of ice to climb

Imagine climbing these things??

Heading back

Waterfall underneath

One of the caves to the Ice Falls

The Ice Falls inside the cave

The base showing moving water and me angling myself right

back so you can see the perspective

This one was just so I was in the picture!!

On the way out of cave

Limestone with impression made by some form of coral

Meg's and that wonderful sun - even Bruce was excited to see shadows!!

There he is  -  we just loved him!

Pilot Mountain - commonly known here as Little Matterhorn

Snow Monster - Can you see him?

These cabins are only open in the summer and they line the creek

What do you think is to the right (your right) of Megs?

That's right an ice cream vendor

Not open in winter season!

So we hiked 1 and half mile up and back again

No winter highlights but my jacket is NOT white lined I promise!!!

Those naughty fairies have been at it again

Our last bridge to cross before the end of trail