At the end of November 2000 we were lucky enough to get over to Canada for a weeks skiing. I’ll try to say a bit about the whole trip rather than just the skiing, so bear with me. We flew from Heathrow to Calgary, Alberta on an Air Canada Flight. This was the first of five Air Canada flights on the trip, and I would fly with them again. The employees all do their very best for you and never stopped running around. The only criticisms I could find about Air Canada is they seemed a bit poorly organised and didn’t give you enough food. On one of the flights they had to return from the runway before take-odd to check if the all of the bags were loaded.
When we arrived in Calgary we hired a car from Alamo, who were cheapest. I’d priced this using a website with the URL https://bnm.com They give comparisons between the main rental companies at most major airports. It cost about 145 ukp for 6 days hire of a large saloon (Chrysler Intrepid), including insurance, taxes and a ski rack, the fuel in Alberta was a whacking 32p a litre(Very cheap compared to the UK).
Our destination from here was Banff, an easy 80 odd mile drive up the dual carriageway. A word of warning though. Look very carefully at your map of Calgary before trying to leave. If you take a wrong turning it can be very disconcerting. We found this out to our detriment, it took us an hour longer than it should have to get onto the Trans-Canadian highway and on the back of a 9 hour flight this was quite distressful.
We arrived in Banff very tired, but the accommodation we were booked into soon cheered us up. Situated about a mile south of Banff Village, The Rocky Mountain Resort consists of a number of very large chalets divided into eight apartments. Our apartment had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, large kitchen/living room with open fire and a balcony with ski rack. This was a freebie (Borrowed timeshare), as we’d never be able to afford something this extravagant for the two of us. The resort had spacious parking, was kept very tidy and snow free, had a swimming pool, bar restaurant etc. It was perfect. I’m just very glad we didn’t have to pay for it.
The next morning we popped into Banff to hire skis. Something to mention about Banff at this point – It gets 4 million tourists per year, mostly during the summer. This means the winter season is just a bonus to them, and there are bargains around. We randomly picked a place called The Ski Stop, on Bear Street. This turned out to be a lucky choice. As we wanted five days ski hire, they threw in a 50-dollar meal voucher for Giorgio’s Italian Restaurant, on Banff Avenue. The bindings were set perfectly. I never felt a wobble all week, but when some nutter took me out from the side on the last day, I flew straight out of the skis thus avoiding a nasty knee injury.
At the shop we discovered that Lake Louise was the only mountain presently open for skiing. We jumped in the car and headed north. It’s a very scenic 35-minute drive up the highway to Lake Louise. When we arrived they were only doing day lift passes at a reduced rate of 15 pounds, as not all of the runs were open. This is very reasonable for North America, as was the 19 pounds they were charging for an hour’s private lesson, for any size of group. The instruction we got here was very good and the instructors all nice and friendly with shiny white teeth, although they teach slightly different methods to Europe (They aren’t big on facing down the hill) .
The runs here were all finished off with artificial snow, but it was extremely well groomed and made for ok skiing. Most of the skiing we did here was of the downhill through trees variety. There weren’t that many lifts open though (4 from 11), but still enough for some fun. The Women’s World Cup Downhill & Slalom races were on while we were there. It was pretty exciting going up in the lift and watching these girls hurtling down the hill underneath us. I was a bit surprised at the lack of spectators, but LL is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
We also skied at Sunshine Mountain, who were charging the same prices. On paper this looks a lot closer to Banff, but once you take into account the windy little roads and the 20-minute gondola trip up to the top it’s a toss-up. The snow was real, un-groomed and wild. This is a massive ski area (LL is bigger, apparently) set in a beautiful high mountain valley. This meant it was above the tree line and quite exposed. It felt colder than Lake Louise which had been down to –15 one of the days. As it was just opening I didn’t really get a chance to see or ski much of it, but it looked like great skiing. The 20-minute gondola trip up was ski-downable via a track that looked like fun. There is extensive cross country skiing potential here (Back country, in Canada) The high meadows at Sunshine looked like they’d be well suited to this. Likewise there were lots of snowboarders, and they seemed to be well excepted at both hills.
The other hill in the area, Mt Norquay, didn’t open while we were there. It’s very small by comparison, apparently, but a lot handier as it’s closest to Banff. If I were going again I’d try and ski all three. If you don’t want to hire a car the buses only cost about 6 pound return from Banff.
Banff itself is lovely. It’s a really cutesy mountain village, with a population of about 6, 000. It boasts 6 Japanese restaurants alone though, so it’d be hard to get bored here in the evening. The places we ate at included The Silver Dragon, a Chinese Restaurant with huge, tasty portions and small, friendly prices. Giorgio’s, our freebie from the Ski Stop, turned out to be a gem. Massive starters, but manageable, stylish entrees – I’d highly recommend this one to any fans of Italian food. Wild Bills, a Tex-Mex, also was great. I could bang on about the food here all day, but I think you’d need to be very unlucky to get a bad meal in Banff. For beers try the Rose and Crown. Wooden clad with a log fire and Strongbow on draught, it claims to be a real English pub, anyway the prices were similar. I don’t know about that, but it was good and the tables for eating always seemed to have plenty of reserved cards on them.
All of these establishments were situated on Banff Avenue, the main drag, as was the cyber-café in the Sunshine Mall. At 3 pound an hour I only stopped long enough to pick up my mail and check the soccer scores at home. Still a handy thing to have. Also on Banff Avenue is Safeway’s, a decent sized supermarket with a nice Deli. In Canada it seemed that you could only buy alcohol from off-licences, cigarettes from petrol stations and food from supermarkets. Another notable rule is that pedestrians have right of way everywhere, which nearly resulted in some very flattened and irate Canadians.
We really enjoyed our stay in Canada. It’s a long, quite expensive flight, but when you get there everything’s fun and not too pricey.