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