A Spin Around the Nordic Centre

I had a great day on the nordic skis in Canmore today. Lou was still sore from skiing earlier this week, so while she hit the climbing shop sales down in the town, Jane and I tackled a 14 km 'blue' (intermediate) circuit. The skiing was great fun, and once we got clear of the general zoo that surrounds the day lodge, it was reasonably quiet on the trails.

Overall, the grading of the runs at the Nordic Centre seemed a bit soft compared to West Bragg Creek, where we usually ski. Black runs at Canmore are fairly wide (4 m+) and because they're groomed, you get plenty of friction for braking on the downhills. The black runs appeared similar in difficulty to parts of blue runs at Bragg, and I saw nothing at Canmore that approached the conditions encountered on the Telephone Loop trail, scene of my hand-breaking episode in 2008. That run is considered to be either blue or black (like my hand afterwards). It seems that Nordic ski gradings are even more subjective than climbing grades.

The big blue loop that we skied ended after about 13 km, 1 km from the day lodge. After that, you're on blacks, or Shanks' Pony. It's a little bizarre that they've created an intermediate loop with no consistent finishing section. Oh well - it gave us a good chance to ski some black runs and find that they're not as bad as you'd expect. We had fun, and no nasty falls (unusually for me...)

New Year's Day 2011

Happy New Year!

Hallam and I decided to shake off hangovers with a short ski around Fish Creek Park. The trails are in good condition, although the creek is still open in a couple of places. Not much happened on our ski, except that we got separated at one point and spent a while looking for each other. We did get very close to some deer on the way back to the car - the deer in Fish Creek are extremely habituated. I suspect they make a fat living off marmalade sandwiches during picnic season....

Kicking Horse Christmas

We had an awesome time in Golden over Christmas 2010. The snow conditions aren't yet up to scratch, but Kicking Horse still offered some great, steep skiing. Lou and I rented a chalet at the Cedar House, which was a cosy retreat after a hard day on the slopes, complete with log stove and hot tub. Upon arrival, Darrin issued us with sleds to transport our bags to the chalet - much more fun than carrying in the mountain of booze and food that we'd transported to BC.

We had three days at the Horse, and only scratched the surface. Thanks to Mark and Nick for showing us around the mountain - there's a lot of potential if you're willing to take off your skis and walk a short distance. Without the local knowledge we'd have missed that aspect - the piste signage at Kicking Horse is a bit random. It was great to catch upm with Mark and Vicky again, and meet their new addition to the family, one-week-old Olivia.

Christmas Day began with a bit of a surprise - I managed to fall out of the loft sleeping area and clatter down the ladder, gaining some impressive bruises. Nothing broken, but I'm still sore a week later.

I met a grumpy old Scotsman in the day lodge on the first day; he was bemoaning the lack of powder, but in truth December is a bit early to be expecting waist-deep champagne. He probably got even more dour shortly after we met - he walked off with Lou's hot chocolate instead of the fancy coffee he'd just paid for. The irony was that he'd struggled to get out of the UK because of snowfall. He should count himself lucky - anyone from the UK who'd booked a trip to Lake Louise for Christmas would have been pretty pissed off. We headed to Louise on the way back from Golden. Their conditions were more like June than December, although it didn't stop them proclaiming the snow to be 'generally good' on their website. The runs we tried were littered with bare rock sections, and often horribly icy. I ended up walking down one section, carrying my skis. We returned to the lodge and got a refund. I've never held the management of Lake Louise in very high regard, and this latest episode just added to the long list of similar stories that get swapped around whenever Calgary skiers get onto the topic of best and worst hills. I put a selection of pictures from the trip on my Picasa site, here.