Our Canadian Roadtrip Adventure: Skiing at the Lake

Visiting Lake Louise was the perfect way to round off our holiday. We had three nights there and the scope for skiing on two days, Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Tuesday we were up at a reasonable hour and on the 9.30am shuttle bus to the resort. We had boarded the bus, sat down and just waiting for the driver to pull away then I checked that we all had our Lake Louise Cards (needed to get our ski passes) and uh oh, one of us did not. So Karen had to get off the bus and go back to the room to get her pass. In the meantime, the bus left, with the rest of us on it! Bye !!! So the other three of us got to the Lake Louise ski area and got everything ready, and as it happened because I had a photo of the cards on my phone, just in case we lost them, they accepted this and issued Karen's pass in any case. In the meantime, Karen had jumped on the next bus and joined us around half an hour later. She was smiling and only a little bit embarrassed to tell she had her card in her pocket after all! Donut.

So, all together again we set off up the front face of Lake Louise for a couple of warm up runs. Warm up runs because we were a) all a little bit rusty, having not skied for 2 days ; and b) it was really cold again, with a bit of breeze and a little light snow in the air it felt arctic.

Later in the afternoon Finlay and Ellie skied down the Larch groomers but took a wrong turn and ended up on run 155 called Run Out - this is a little used run that winds it's way around the side of the mountain, quite flat in places, eventually returning back at Lake Louise base. At the same time me and the missus went to ski run 142 called Rock Garden, which looked interesting. A bumpy traverse leads to an area of natural rocks dotted around the slopes, each covered with mounds of snow creating the most unique and interesting landscape. This was really fun to ski, in and out of the bumps, or over them if that what takes your fancy. A lot of this run is featured in this first video clip below which is a cut down edit of the day.

After this I went to ski this run again and shot a full length video on the GoPro helmet cam which is shown below.

After an hour or so we stopped for a warm up and a drink, but I decided to use this opportunity to go back out and have a play with all the mountain my playground. Did a tough run on Larch (Lookout Chutes) and then figured I'd just have time to try a run from the top of the Ptarmigan chair. But the chair stopped on the way up so by the time I started the run I thought the crew would be wondering where I'd got to, so I sent Kaz a message to meet me down by the lifts at 11:20 rather than me going back to the restaurant. Here is a video clip of me skiing this run, trying to keep check on the time to make sure I didn't keep them waiting. As it happens they didn't get the message so it was all in vain, nevertheless a great run.

Below is a video of Karen blasting down the Ladies Downhill piste, she really was motoring, I've never seen her ski so fast, at least on purpose. Wowzers Kazzers. At the end of the day, for the last run we all tackled this run again with both Ellie and Fin making easy work of it, meaning everyone finished their skiing on a high.

On the Wednesday I went back up to ski a bit more of the mountain, while the others did their own things back at the Chateau. Kaz visited the Spa for some sort of head massage, then with Fin went ice skating on the lake. Ellie took some time to out to do some homework for school, something called a dissertation.

Came across some great runs such as Fencline Gully, various Gully runs off the back of the Summit poma, some more good tree runs on Larch and finally some great runs on the front face of the Summit. The mens downhill course is a walk in the park compared to the Strief at Kitzbuhel and I really enjoyed the area near the top of the Grizzly Express lift - all these runs tend to blend into one and combine some open areas leading into more wooded sections with nicely spaced trees. Forgot to bring the GoPro mount so no footage from this day. Except for this little clip which I filmed on the phone

For Canadian standards, Lake Louise is a large area with possibly the most variety of runs that we've seen at any one ski area. Reminds me a lot of Vail with the combination of front face, back bowls and then the extra hill of Larch, except Larch isn't a patch on Blue Sky Basin (Vail) which is still one of my favourite areas of all times. Lake Louise has something for everyone. Many of the double blacks are not too bad, in fact some of them are positively trivial, but a few of them really did have some steep pitches with narrow twisty sections. There were a lot of cruisy blues and greens. It doesn't need a full week to ski this place out, like it would at say Val d'Isere or Les 3 Vallees, but I would have liked a few more days here to explore more and really get to know the best spots. It's a different type of skiing from what we are used to in Europe, there are just so many different lines and options available from the top of each lift. The whole off piste areas are part of the patrolled ski area and opens up so much terrain.

It's been an absolute blast getting to sample so much of Canada in a short space of time and being able to compare and contrast the different areas. I'll try to put a summary page together when things settle down a bit and I've had time to reflect. In the meantime enjoy the pictures below and as usual if you have any comments please use the button at the bottom of this page, would love to hear your thoughts.