Alberta Bound – Big Days for the Big 3

Days 18 – 24, Banff

As Gordon Lightfoot sang, we are Alberta bound. Wednesday brings another 3-1/2 hour drive along Can Hwy 1, this time from Revelstoke to Banff and Canmore, to be exact. Even though it’s grey and overcast, spectacular scenery is promised and does not disappoint. Nine, ten, twelve thousand foot peaks, one after another, seemingly leap right from the roadside into the sky. Incredible. Don’t forget your Canadian National Park pass; all these areas are in the Park and a $20 a day entrance fee is the going rate for access to skiing.

Our stay here will encompass six days and three areas – Mt. Norquay, Lake Louise and Banff Sunshine Village. The Big 3 as they are known. Amidst clear skies and sun, Thursday’s first on the list is Mt. Norquay. First opened in 1929, Norquay still resembles an old-fashioned ski village. Their first chairlift was built in 1948. The day lodge is all-wood finished, plain, straightforward. The lifts comprise three quads and one double chairlift with a total vertical of 1,300 feet. Very modest by modern standards, but pretty normal for its day. Like its sister areas, there is no on-hill lodging. Want to ski the Big 3? Find a room in Banff or Canmore.

On the plus side, Norquay has a nice combination of blue and black runs, lots of fall line skiing and several runs with more than respectable steeps. And some of those steeps were groomed! Those were fun! It’s a modest, old-school area with some excellent, consistently sloped trails. They’re not long but they’re good. Equally good – no crowds, including runs with barely anyone on them. One day, and area down.

Friday, the sun once again shines brightly so, naturally, Sunshine Village beckons. The thirty miles from Canmore to Sunshine is, like all things in Banff National Park, eyepopping. Few places in the world can rival the mountain scenery here. Once at the area, the parking lot shuttle drops us at the base lodge. The gondola sweeps us up to the mountain lodge where three quads and a luxury six passenger chair lift wait to take us above the tree line to nearly 9,000 feet.

From there, several more quads (some like the luxo six have heated seats!) are spread around the mountain to evenly distribute a lot of people. Because there are so many lifts and so much territory, the lines are short. But there’s more: hundreds of peaks are visible from nearly anywhere. The scenery is, well, I can’t think of many more superlatives. You will never tire of it.

While being so concerned about my own destination, I’ve neglected to mention the mid-station gondola stop where you can exit to catch the Goat’s Eye Express to very near the top of 9,200 foot Goat’s Eye Mountain. Consisting of nearly all black diamond and double diamond runs, this hill means business. Today, however, we concern ourselves with the more constrained good times of Lookout Mountain and its wide open, Alps-like above the tree line skiing. It was immense good fun.

Left, view from the top of the Lookout Mountain chairlift and right, looking back up Lookout Mountain

I only have one caution, and this goes for most Canadian resorts: Canadians love to ski fast and have no trouble whizzing by right next to you while marginally in control. The larger the ski area the more prevalent these goobers seem to become. Be forewarned. Other than that, your only major issue will be staying warm.

Banff is famous for very cold skiing conditions, including strong winds. There’s a reason most of the lifts have bubbles to shelter you from the wind while riding the chairs. Several of the lifts also have those aforementioned cushy, heated seats – yes, just like the ones in your car that you so dearly love. Guess what? You’re going to want those bubbles and those seats.

The winds can blow over 50 mph and the temps can drop below zero – that’s Fahrenheit, not Celsius. So come with your warm longies, your best sweater and every layer you can think of. You might need them. Lucky for us, the temp is only around 12 and gets as high as 17. The wind comes up in the afternoon, and when it tops 20 mph around 3pm, we call it a day. Tomorrow promises more weather, with snow and wind increasing through the weekend and into Monday. We’ll see what tomorrow brings before we decide what’s next. Fingers crossed.

Saturday brings weather, as promised. We decide to take a rest day, wander around Banff and Canmore, and catch up on the to-do list. Funny how that doesn’t go away just because you’re on vacation. Window shopping in downtown Banff, a walk along the Bow River, finished with a visit to the famous 137-year-old Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. This is another growing resort town. As it’s in the Banff National Park, one wonders how much growth the Park System will ultimately allow.

When we make it back to our Canmore timeshare, I realize I’m dead tired; tired when I got up this morning, tired walking around town, and really tired now. Janice wants to take four flights of stairs. There is an elevator. My legs feel like lead, my hips are sore, my back feels like it’s permanently fused to my pelvis. There’s the couch! It’s calling me, just like the one at home. Some things, thankfully, don’t change. I collapse. Golf is on. Now I can close my eyes….

Left, the bottom of Black Magic at Mt. Norquay. Right, a cute Christmas tree made of skis & poles at the base of Sunshine Village.

We wake Sunday to a winter storm. As of this morning Lake Louise has 9 inches new. Wind, blowing snow and limited visibility combined with the lost hour of daylight savings makes this an easy one to take off. We’ll try our luck tomorrow when the weather is supposed to moderate.

Monday! An overnight dump of over 13 inches at Lake Louise promises to make this a “top 3 day” of the season, according to a local who rides with us on the Top of the World quad. Promises of increasing sun and decreasing snow and wind have everyone heading to the slopes. It seems the whole town of Banff wants to get in on the goods, as by 10:30 the lots are full and cars are parked a good mile down both sides of the road. Incredible.

Left – Ravens casually observe crazy skiers heading to the lifts; Right – We waited for a half dozen mountain goats to cross the Sunshine access road.

It was still snowing when we left Canmore at 9:15 with compact snow and ice on the roads. But the forecast holds true and the weather improves throughout the day until we finally call it at 3:30. It was an epic day. Powder everywhere, all of which was well torn up or skied out by day’s end. While the crowds were massive, the size of this area keeps the lines down to 5-10 minutes, all very acceptable.

The prediction of higher winds in the afternoon thankfully doesn’t materialize, so we ski everything except the East Bowl and Skyline; No East Bowl when an area guide tells us the snow isn’t as good, and no Skyline because it spends most of the day in fog. Our friendly guide, standing in yellow parka at the top of the Pipestone Express chair, also informs us we should stop for the area’s best food and a libation at the mid-mountain Whitehorn Bistro. Alas, our skiing enthusiasm gets the better of us and it closes before we make the effort to stop by.

Left – a mid-mountain trail at Lake Louise; Right – along the road from Lake Louise back to Canmore.

It was hard to be disappointed, as we had just experienced the best snow of our trip so far. These are the kind of days that keep you coming back to the slopes, and Lake Louise is a mountain full of variety, access and good skiing. Not just because of the snow, this is my favorite ski mountain in Banff National Park. It lacks some of the spectacular views of Sunshine, but has better overall slopes and lacks those notorious Sunshine Village above the tree line winds. What a way to end our time here at Banff. Superb.

Tomorrow we drop back across the border to Schweitzer Basin outside Sandpoint, ID. The forecast says between 2-6 inches for the next several days there. I hope they’re right. More about that later.

Especially in these small back country border towns it should be expected border crossings won’t always go as planned. We’re Nexus card holders, so getting pulled over is an especially bad thing. Pull over to the side please. Go ask for Agent Fox. Great.

We sit in the car, waiting for Agent Fox. Eventually, another agent comes out and says to us, “I guess I’ll do the other agent’s job. Go inside and yell out for Fox.”

Janice and I look at each other – Seriously? Ask for ‘Fox’ by yelling out his name? Sounds like a setup. He reads our faces, grins and says, “No, really. Just yell out ‘Fox.’ He’ll come out.” O-kay. What choice do we have. In we go. Janice asks rather meekly for “Fox.” Nothing. I ask loudly for “Fox?” Everyone stops and looks at us with silent “WTF?” expressions. Shit. Now it feels like that other agent did play us. We might be really screwed.

A minute passes. Agent Fox appears. He motions us to the counter. “I’ve been looking for you,” he says. “The agent said he told you to park in the lane, come inside and ask for me.”

“He just told us to park in the lane, and that you would be out,” I said.

“Not what he told me.”

Ok. We’re off to a great start. He begins with a lecture and then a full inspection of our car. Then he comes back with another lecture, gives us a warning and lets us go on our way. Thank you, sir. Let’s get on our way to Sandpoint. I can’t say anymore. If I do, my wife will kill me. Suffice to say we got taught a lesson.

The whole experience makes the bar sound all the more inviting when we arrive at Schweitzer’s Humbird Lodge. The Lodge is new, very nicely appointed, has a cool rooftop hot tub – and the bar is right next to the main entrance. Inspection reveals only good and high-level libations populating the shelves. I will be setting up residence here as soon as we haul our stuff to the room.

A well-made Old-fashioned, a bit of curiosity cured with a snort of Bob Dylan’s Heavens Door Revival bourbon, and finishing touches provided by a chorizo burger with a Green’s Dubble Ale satisfy the evening’s requirements. Janice has a delicious Wagyu burger and salad, even if the burger lacks her preference for ketchup.

The room is modern, spacious, well-laid out. Easily the nicest hotel we have stayed in so far. Our timeshares are different, as they are like fully furnished upper-end condos.

Day 25 – Schweitzer Basin

As forecasted, half a foot of new snow greets a foggy morning. It’s a bit on the warm side, hovering around freezing at the base, but snow is still falling. Our first runs provide surprisingly light powder that predictably gets heavier as each hour passes. We manage three hours of skiing before the snow finally becomes too heavy and wet to bother. The clouds get lower and the fog heavier as the day wears on. Enough of that. Let’s hit the hot tub.

The forecast calls for blizzard conditions tomorrow. Keeping our fingers crossed we can at least get in a couple hours of good skiing. Ski vacations are always something of a crap shoot. We’ll just have to wait and see.

As the days have passed on this adventure, I’ve noticed my skiing is getting better. I’m regaining the feel of quicker turns, dancing among moguls, darting about in cut up trails with mixed and heavier snow conditions. There’s little doubt spring is making its presence known wherever we go. Friday we leave for Big Sky in Montana. Hopefully, we have enough winter left to finish our ski loop adventure before running out of skiable snow.