Canada 07/08 – Banff – Day 3
Canada 07/08 – Banff – Day 3
Today we decided to try something new – instead of the 45 minute bus ride to Lake Louise, we decided to catch the 8:30am bus to Sunshine Village… another ski resort closer to Banff (only 16km away). The bus ride was uneventful, although the queues at the bottom of the gondola weren’t much fun either. Sunshine is built in a way that all traffic comes to the car park and bottom gondola station, only for everybody to ride the gondola up nearly 4.5km to the village – set much higher up in a bowl on the mountain. While this is a novelty at first, it provides a definite choke-point, with every guest having to line up to reach any of the runs offered. The lines moved quickly, however, and we were at the top in a little over 30 minutes after getting off the bus (the gondola ride itself was 20 minutes long).
We reached the village and headed straight for the day lodge – as always – to get breakfast. Unfortunately, there were no buffets here like at Lake Louise, but there was a fair selection to choose from anyhow. A slow start was had by both Pip and I, and Ed and Tess hit the slopes at least one run ahead of us. They discovered that the conditions weren’t great at the top of the mountain, with wind blowing a gale (enough to close a number of lifts for half the day). We headed out soon after and discovered some great skiing, which was considerably more covered.
We enjoyed the skiing, with the runs being considerably shorter than Lake Louise, but much more varied. Pip and I found ourselves on a crazy mogully run, Christmas Tree (sounds nice doesn’t it), which was more black than it was blue, but she handled the challenge fine. Unfortunately, she took her first fall here – although it was far from serious, it did dent the confidence a little for a while.
After lunch, we continued to explore the mountain, spending most of our time on the Wolverine Express chair. Here we discovered many interesting runs, and Pip skied her first ‘real’ black run of the journey – Goat Chicken. The end of the day came slightly earlier than at Lake Louise, mostly due to different bus times. Because of the long gondola ride up, for the keenest of skiers (which happened to be everyone on this occasion), there is a considerably long ski-out to get back to the base car park. Everyone handled this well, although there were some definite sore legs amongst the group by the end.
Upon returning to the hotel at 4:30pm, we soon discovered that one of our rooms had not yet been made up, and our other room had only just been completed. This was pretty ridiculous, considering our experience when checking in, and also the fact that in each room was a card stating that service would be conducted between 8am and 4pm.
After discovering this, and dealing a blow of complaints to both management and the housekeeping department, Ed received a free bottle of wine, as well as a $300 gift card for use within the hotel. Little did we know that this would not be our last bottle of wine. By this stage, Nat, Pip and I had already made our way into town, and were inspecting the numerous gift store that exist along the main street of Banff.
Finding many hilarious souvenirs, we continued to explore until Ed and Tess joined us for dinner at “Thai and Grill” – Banff’s own East Asian Bistro. We enjoyed the meal (probably because it wasn’t served with fries) and reveled in light of the gifts that the Fairmont staff had generously provided. Upon finishing the meal we returned to the hotel and enjoyed another swim in the pool.
Although we had spent time, since dinner, attempting to decide where to go skiing the next morning, by the time we went to bed we still hadn’t decided, but instead had decided to get up early enough to catch either bus – thus leaving the decision even later, until the following morning.
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Let it snow!
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