After a day of cross country skiing yesterday, Nadine was feeling a bit tired, so opted to relax around Lake Louise. I, however, was eager to get back to the slopes.
I had a quick breakfast, and headed over to the hills. Instead of stopping to take photos, I pretty much just skied advanced runs all day long, so I don’t have much to report. Just a fun day on the slopes!
I haven’t been cross country skiing in many years, and Nadine had never been, so today we thought we’d hit the trails. It was still the long weekend, where the ski hill was likely to be busy, so getting out on the cross country trails would provide a bit of solitude.
We rented skis from the hotel for the day, and decided to stick to some easier trails. Since we had been up the lake on snow shoes the other day, we decided to follow trail #2 below, which heads out below the base of Fairview Mountain and toward the Moraine Lake Road.
Here we are heading down the trail.
And here is Nadine getting the hang of things.
We skied out to the end of the “easy” part of the trail, turned around before the steeper sections, and headed back to toward Lake Louise. On the return, as we were getting a bit more confidence, we detoured onto trail #4 for the final stretch home.
It was a great day of exercise and nature!
Back at the hotel, we enjoyed a nice relaxing meal in the Lakeview Lounge.
After a lot of physical activity, the plan today was to do the opposite!
Today is the Saturday of the Family Day weekend in Alberta. When we were here last year, we learned quickly that it means things get busy. In particular, the ski hill will be packed. Therefore, we had planned to not ski today, but instead booked treatments at the hotel spa. It was a very relaxing way to spend the day.
Also because it was a busy weekend, we made sure that we had booked dinner reservations well in advance (months in advance, actually). Tonight, we were heading down to the Banff Springs Hotel, to one of our favourite restaurants. A dinner at Castello has become a bit of a tradition for us whenever we’re out this way.
Here we are at our regular table!
After a lovely dinner, we headed back toward Lake Louise. The weather was picking up a bit, so we were glad to have booked the early 6PM sitting for dinner, so as not to be driving back too lake in the winter conditions.