Skiing Beautiful Lake Louise

Temple Lodge at Lake Louise

I woke at 8.30 to Dad washing dishes. Hugo was feeling particularly motived to have his first shower all holiday. We were quicker at our morning routine and made the 10am bus to Lake Louise ski field.

The bus took about an hour to meander through trees and mountains, with no sign of a lake. We entered a huge wooden tavern with exposed beams - the lunch room! Not stopping for a coffee like usual, we continued on up a much shorter gondola for our first ski. The runs were huge - wide and rolling between avenues of trees. Each took a solid ten or fifteen minutes to get back to the bottom.

Mum and Dad in front of the main lodge

We had soup for lunch, crammed in with some youth sharing a table in the lunch hall. The coffees were so large, we could have easily split one Americano between three of us. I mistakenly had creamy potato and bacon soup, causing my lactose intolerance to unsettle my stomach for the rest of the day.

After lunch we went over the mountain to the 'back bowl'. It would have had an amazing vista if not for the misty white out and light snow falling. We did an exposed run down a sharp mountain face (that Lucy went really slow down, not seeing the avalanche zone signs). We caught a narrow rickety chairlift ironically called Paradise that ticked slowly up a sheer cliff to an even more exposed ridge with a gale blowing. It was so cold at the top, my fingers froze getting out hand-warmers for Mum.

Feeling exposed

Despite the weather we skied the bowl for the rest of the day - I enjoyed it's long steep runs through the valley. We found a lodge in the trees at the bottom of the valley by two more chairlifts. One offered great groomed Blue runs, most blue runs on the rest of the mountain were mogels so we had skied green ones all day for Lucy's sake, plus they were good challenging greens unlike in New Zealand.

Leaving the valley, we went over the ridge to find sunshine fighting through, causing the snow mist to sparkle like gold glitter. Mum, Hugo and I got some good blue groomed runs down. It was 3pm, so we didn't have much time - we got the 3.30pm bus home. All our phones died and froze so we didn't get many photos!

Amazing wide, long runs at Lake Louise

The bus back to Banff seemed much quicker. At home we had a cup of tea (following the Innes of Banff ski locker mission), went to the 'whirlpool' where a man disconcertingly sat in the indoor pool with sunglasses on, holding his phone and a young mum had to jump into the pool to save her 3 year old from drowning. The we got 'dressed up' into multiple thermals to brave going outside for dinner. Amazingly the public bus arrived as soon as we stepped outside so we got that instead. We had Canadian-Italian at Moose Lodge, a beautiful hotel. The food was extremely cheesy, the waitress was rushed and there was a slideshow of Italy on the TV. Lucy predictably ordered her favourite dish, spaghetti bolognese and couldn't finish the portion size, and I predictably had tiramisu at the last minute and it made me ill.

We missed the bus home, I was secretly glad as it gave me a chance to walk off my bloat.



Had one of my terrible sleeps last night, fell asleep around 4.30am and woke at 8.30 on the dot when Dad turned on the TV as way of an alarm. We did our usual morning routine, breakfast, shower, march across the Inns of Banff to the ski locker. We got the 10am bus again to Lake Louise. I tried to nap on the bus but it was such a nice sunny morning. There had been light snowfall overnight so the mountains had a new dusting. We saw lots of little paw prints through the snow alongside the motorway.

The day skiing was fun - we warmed up with the same blue run before heading over to the bowl. Mum, Hugo and I decided to try a new run down instead of the open avalanche threat one - it was a thin skatey ice on the steep slope. We then did the blue Nga Wai Heke-esque run with Lucy, she didn't flinch. Hugo went off into the trees at the top, I was freaking out because I thought he'd gone into a cliff warning area. Mum had a massive smash on the run we decided to stop for lunch at Temple Lodge in the trees at the bottom of the bowl.

We were all in high spirits

I had some delicious chilli and Hugo got poutine with fried chicken (which I also ate a lot of). In the afternoon, we tried to do the 8km round the mountain run but it was shut off. The run down to it was nice - gentle, rolling and open. After, I tried to take everyone down the groomed blue run we hadn't done yet, that was busy and steep.

Our lunch spot

Feeling a bit put out by the lack of success of the last one, I did my final run of the day down another ungroomed blue. It started well apart from scraping my skis on some rogue rocks. Then there were some smaller mogels followed by big ones. Luckily a ski instructor was leading his student across them so I followed to a nice fluffy slope of machine made powder, filling in the metre high gaps. Then I spotted Mum from across the slipe and we did our favourite warm-up run down to the base. We caught the 3.30pm bus home and I drifted off to 80s rock ballads playing on the speaker.

Enjoying dem 80s beats

We had dinner at the Bear's Den, the pub below the Inns of Banff lobby. It was much nicer than the previous night, friendly service and a packed bar. My favourite was a nice old photos of bear cubs on the wall. I had steak and frozen vegetables - the freshest veges I'd had the entire trip.

Such a cool photo