Our Trip to the Rockies
By Caren and Craig
..as I write this, there's a snow storm going on outside...bare that in mind for irony purposes.
And so there we were, 2 weeks ago, waking up EARLY Saturday morning; the benefits of last night’s packing waiting by the door on eager wheels….
Still bleary eyed, we go through our normal morning procedures….which consists of eating and watching the weather channel these days.
“Weather update! … SEVERE WINTER STORM WARNING for Southern and eastern Ontario…in the next 12 hours the whole south eastern region of Canada (including Toronto) will be turned into a big snow pile.”
We laugh…. as we are off to the airport to go for a week’s skiing in the Rockies (
“Weather update for the
It’s a two-edged sword though...with the nice sunny weather, comes with a lack of snow which might impact our skiing/boarding! … ah well, not much we can do about that now...there’s still a 180CM base, and all 108 runs of sunshine mountain are open.
Ok, call the Taxi and we’re off!
Everything goes smooth; our 4 hour flight has a 30 min stopover in
We land in
By this stage, we’re tired and hungry…even a 6 hour travel day can take it out of you.
Luckily, when we finally arrive at our hotel (the
(picture along banff's main street)
And so, in that order we take care of business…..dinner at Tony Roma’s (located handily inside the hotel!) was nice.
We took a few minutes to head to one of the 20 odd ski shops (in a town ¼ the size of Orewa!) and rent some Gear…
Caren picked up some fancy ski’s, and I got my snowboard and boots.
What’s great about Banff is, the ski shop’s simply ask “where are you staying?” , and will transport the equipment to you by 7AM the next morning...saves on the hassle of carrying it 10 meters across the road to the hotel yourself I guess!
We notice there seem to be a lot of Aussies, Kiwi’s and especially Poms’s around…in fact, I’d say people with “English like” accents outweighed North American accents by 5 – 1.
Also saw a lot of tanned and blond Europeans wandering around in their matching ski suits, but they seemed to keep to themselves mostly.
Anyway, with dinner and ski rental out of the way, we make a quick supply run to the local supermarket (need mountain snacks!) and make plans to retire early…..the first bus heads up to Sunshine mountain at 8am and we plan to be on it!
The Room is a standard hotel room (nice, but not overly); the bed is a super comfortable California King size though, so we’re out like lights.
The alarm goes off at 7ish, and we’re up!
Get our gear on (thermals etc…it may be +10c at midday down here in town, but it’ll still be -2 / -5c on the mountain), and head back to Tony Roma’s for a buffet breakfast.
Of course, being buffet we both completely over do it, and have to waddle to the bus clutching our overburdened middles! …
Never mind though…Our gear has turned up, and here’s the bus! So we’re off!
(Caren to the right waiting for Bus to arrive out the back of our hotel..we are early!)
The buses arrive every ½ hour, each ski mountain has their own fleet of busses for the purpose, and it’s all VERY organized..
If one bus fills up, the scout vehicle simply brings in another from the depot…no-one gets left behind or has to wait for another bus…very pro!
It’s about a 20 minute bus ride to the base village of
Yes, it’s a big mountain!...or infact, big mountains…as
(Caren up on sunhine with some mountains in the background!)
Anyway, without going on too much, it’s a pretty good place.
We strap our gear on, and head up the Strawberry Chairlift to do a couple of green/easy run’s to limber up (lol)
Everything’s running ok after a few runs...the weather is beautiful (clear and sunny), and although the snow conditions aren’t perfect (3 weeks without new snow), its certainly ski able.
Caren, being the organized one of our group-of-two , has already determined that the mountain run free ski tours of the ski area, and has decided we should go on one…sounds like a good idea to me!
So we meet at the “ski tour” area for the 10am tour, and split into groups based on ability.
There’s about 25 people, some super hardcore, some intermediate, and some beginner.
Caren heads to an intermediate (blue) group, but I chicken out and jump on a “light blue” group (a polite way of saying green/beginner…hah).
My group has about 6-7 people in it, and we head up to check out some green runs on Mt Standish (one of the 3 mountains).
Our guide is on the weirdest contraption I’ve ever seen, called a “snow bike”…it’s basically a bike frame with 2 ski’s instead of 2 wheels…it has shock absorbers like a mountain bike, and you can steer the front ski with handlebars just like a bike (although as I’m to discover later, you aren’t really steering much of anything on them!)
(the Snow Bike..you also wear mini-skis on each foot, the mini ski's do most of your turning and stopping)
He tries to talk some of us into renting one and having a go, but we’re all keen to just stick with what we have (in my case a snowboard) and check out the mountains.
We have a great tour, doing lots of Green/Light Blue and a few Blue runs to get into it (bear in mind I’m still learning!) getting all over two of the mountains in sunshine … Caren also had a good tour she tells me, lots of tearing around blue / black runs!.
The tour ends at 12:30 , and so Caren and I meet up and grab lunch.
After lunch we decide to do another mountain tour, and this time I go in a Blue group with Caren…this afternoon they’ll beheading to Goats eye mountain, which is a more Black/Blue mountain, with no green runs on it.
(A shot of Goats Eye mountain (right side) from atop Sunshine peak, and above the "delerium dive"..a new "thrill ride" run for teh super hard-core..you need a transponder and avalanche shovel with you to be allowed on)
Unfortunately (for me!) after a few hours boarding in the tour, a snow-snake leapt out of the snow and bit my snowboard! … this caused me to catch an edge while going fairly fast, and resulted in me flipping over and landing rather solidly on my left shoulder.
Caren was right behind me, as was a Ski Patrol guy, so they both stopped to help me out.
Turns out I’d dislocated/separated my shoulder, which meant that was the end of my day’s (and possibly weeks!) snowboarding
I caught a lift down the mountain on the back of a ski-do, as I couldn’t move my arm at that stage, and promised the Snow patrol guy I’d go visit the Hospital in
Bugger.
Feeling pretty zonked out, I decided to go rest up in one of the Café’s on the mountain, while Caren finished off the day’s skiing.
4:30 rolled around, and we headed back down the Gondolas to the waiting buses, and back to
An Exciting 6.5 hour wait in the emergency room followed, with the doc finally letting my know that the X-rays look ok (no chipped bones), and to stay off the mountain for 6 weeks.
…..don’t think so doc!
I did decide to take the next day off as a rest day, but Caren was keen to head to Lake Louise, so I thought I’d come along as official Documenter.
Another early start, and on the bus to
(lake louise from the parking lot)
(caren (in middle-rear green jacket) amongst the crowds waiting to get up the hill)
It was fairly busy, and although it is still a HUGE mountain, it’s not as spread out as sunshine.
Caren assures me the skiing was fantastic
I rode up (and down :( ) a few of the chairlifts, but my arm was fairly sore, and watching people ski is no where near as much fun as doing it, so I headed back to the hotel at 1 o clock.
(some snowboarders doing god knows what halfway down a run on
That night we went out to have SukiYaki at a Japanese restaurant, which was really nice….
A hell of a lot of food for 2 people!
Next day (Tuesday) was our “scheduled” rest day, so we woke up late, and toured around Banff on foot most of the day, taking photo’s and shopping etc…
(Caren on a stone bridge in
(Craig under some trees next to the
Later in the afternoon we caught a Taxi to the
Still, a hot soak was just the thing.
I was feeling ok, and had a stash of painkillers, so decided that on Wednesday I was going to get back on the Mountain!
But this time, on a SnowBike!
To my eyes, the bike looked like a lot of fun + looked a lot less likely to cause me bodily harm (well, at least in comparison to a snowboard!).
We got up there, and rented a bike (+ compulsory 1 hour lesson…mostly “how to load large unwieldy device on chair-lifts!”) , and then headed out...Caren on Ski’s, me on a bike.
Turns out, the things are FANTASTIC fun.
Within an hour, I was comfortably going down dark blue and black runs…infact after a couple of hours, I could go faster than Caren.
It’s a lot like riding a dirt bike…most of the time is spent counter-steering and sliding around corners rather than directly aiming it any where…..too much fun! … and quite comfortable as well with a shock absorbing seat to rest on at the bottom of the hill.
Anyways, we had a great day skiing, headed back into
Once again, they insisted on piling WAAY to much food on our plates, so we ate like pigs, and waddled out to hibernate for the next day’s skiing.
Thursday, Caren really wanted to go back to Lake Louise …unfortunately they don’t have Snow Bikes on
Had a great day, and ended up doing a couple of mountain tours (one in morning, one in afternoon) for company , which was a real hoot, as most people haven’t even seen a snow-bike before …. I’m not your usual attention whore as you all know, but it was pretty funny how people will stop and stare on the mountain as you FLY past them.
Also must be a good way to pick up chicks, based on the amount of conversations you get into in chairlift lines, ha-ha..
There’s a cool HUGE chairlift on sunshine Mountain called the “great divide” as it crosses from
(the largest of the 3 skiable areas at sunshine Village...can be prone to whiteout though)
Friday rolled around far too quickly, and we both decided to go back up Sunshine (this time with a camera)..
This time also, Caren was going to try out a snow-bike!
Within an hour she was flying down the hill as well, and although I can’t speak for her, I think she really enjoyed it as well…
(Caren shredding down a double black diamond run (heh, just joking, think its a blue) on her Bike)
(Goats eye Mountain in background...2nd largest of the 3 skiable mountains at sunshine village)
Anyway,
We had great day touring around the mountains, and taking photos, but all too soon it was over, and we had to go back to
Unfortunately, the winter finally caught up with me, and I managed to catch a cold that day, so by 5PM I was feeling like crap and running a temperature.
Still! Nothing some pills can’t solve, and we were off out to a neat Mexican bar for dinner.
Had a good meal and enjoyed ourselves, and back to the Hotel to pack for an early departure the next morning.
The flight back to Toronto was uneventful…thank god it was on a Saturday though, as I couldn’t have faced a day at work on Sunday with a separated shoulder, cold AND 5 days of skiing aches!
It’s all good though, we are now back in the saddle, with a week of work under our belts...my cold has cleared up…my arm feels pretty good (though we are both wondering why my collar bone now sticks up at an odd angle and make a big lump on my shoulder!).
Off to Ice hockey tonight (saterday12th March) , and a new week begins.
So, that was our trip to the
No news about our Temp work Visa yet, so our May 6th deadline is looking more and more likely.
If we do have to leave the country, we’ll probably visit the
If that’s the case, we’ve a lot of planning to do before then, as we’ve got a fair bit of stuff to send home…but, that can be worried about later.
Bye all
posted by CarenT at
11:18 am
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