It was freezing last night... -25 in town with a windchill of -32.
When we came back from snowboarding Lake Louise we hit the hot tub here in the hotel to relax then got ready for dinner.
As soon as we walked into the street the cold air froze our nose hairs which is a slightly uncomfortable feeling as you can imagine. Kind of like constantly having a booger in your nose that you can't get rid of.
We didn't want to walk too far so we jumped into the first decent restaurant we could find, the Maple Leaf Grill.
Dinner was tasty (but on the expensive side), I had the roast duck and neri had lamb shank.
We woke up this morning to more clear skies, but the temperature was still around -26 with no fresh snow which made it hard to get motivated.
We were also put off by the icy conditions at Lake Louise the day before.
Eventually we made it up to Sunshine Village by around 11am. This was the first bluebird day since we got to Canada so we swapped our goggle lenses from yellow to chrome.
Up the Gondola we could see the views that we missed in the white out on our first visit. Absolutely stunning scenery.
We had a quick look at Goats Eye Mountain but from the base all we could see were steep icy moguls... such a shame because looks like there are some awesome steeps up there... we just need more snow! We also could see / hear them avalanche bombing the bowls around Goats Eye all day.
There has been a lot of talk about avalanches around here... people are saying ski patrol are being over-cautious, but reports have been saying that it is really unstable out of bounds which has kept us in the resort boundaries. Looking across the mountain there are so many untouched bowls just a short hike out of bounds... but they must be untouched for a reason! We're not about to risk it.
It was really cold today, up the top of the mountain it felt like my face and my fingers were going to fall off, but despite no new snow for a few days the cover was in surprisingly good condition. Sunshine maintains the snow a lot better than Lake Louise. Even the steep sections were nowhere near as icy.
Most of the day was spent cruising around the mountain, doing runs all over the place and just taking it easy. I love this mountain but it desperately needs fresh snow so that we can enjoy the steeper terrain. Unfortunately it doesn't look like we'll get any before we leave in tuesday.
Still managed to find some powder in some very tight tree runs... there must be heaps of local secret spots that we don't know about.
Tomorrow we go on a wildlife tour around Banff so hopefully we see some animals!
Will probably head up to the hot springs in the afternoon.
-Jase
2 comments:
Views at Lake Louise were the best. We liked it so much we went back.
Hope the weather improves before you leave.
Back to work tomorrow so I'll be thinking about how much fun you're having.
Kev.
Yeah views at lake Louise were the most impressive, but compared to Sunshine their snow was in bad shape.
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