Banff 2008

Well, I'm sitting with my case virtually packed already!

The reason? I've a night shift tonight, and tomorrow night. After the second night (Sunday) I finish at 6am and have to drive over to the airport, park and get through check-in by about 6.30am. Hopefully online check-in will ease this, though I've no idea how I'm gonna get my hold bag ticketed..!

Very excited now, Jonny even more so I think. Crap exchange rate for UKP / Euro though, which was pants. May leave laptop at home to speed up security; any swabbing will detract greatly from the already small window for a few pints in the airport.

I'll update soon

Hello!

A sort of loose plan to go snowboarding again this Winter had been in the works since before we'd even been to Banff, but due to a combination of factors (ok, just my lack of time off work) we can't go!

So... after much hassling me to agree, myself and my friend Jonny are going to Rome baby! 3rd until 5th March, a Monday through to Wednesday. The flight times are such that I've to leave work at 6am (half hour early off my night shift), run round to the terminal and try and make the 0720 flight! But it gives us two full days and nights in Rome, so the rush is worth it.

It's gonna be budget in the extreme, as I'm just back from Canada and erm... crashed my car up pretty bad! But that's all fixed and almost paid, so the next 11 days will be spent on the Rome forum gleaning whatever info I can!

My hopes? That it's like Paris for art and history, and Canada for the people niceness...

andy.

I'm writing this from home, with the trip behind us now. As I speak, we're looking into returning next January, for 11 nights - as a family again, with a very good friend of mine in tow. Without doubt, it was the best holiday we've ever had, and I'd wholeheartedly encourage any of you hmm'ing and aah'ing about going skiing or snowboarding, to just do it.

Banff itself was great, and I've enclosed a few pictures below of the town to give you an idea of what the area in which we stayed was like.

The view from our hotel room! Obviously, it was an inward facing room; we set three budweiser's on the inside of the window sill, before going out for the day, with the window open just a crack and partially covered by mosquito gauze. They'd completely frozen when we came home.

Banff main street

The outside of our hotel

A frozen river / lake inside the town boundary

And a man walking across said river / lake with his shopping

The trip home was hard work; while we didn't have to stay the night in London, as we did on the way there, so we were all knackered, especially after the week we'd had.

Feel free to leave any comments or get in touch by email with any questions! andy_mobile@o2email.co.uk

andy.

A sad day - our last real day on snow.

Mum and dad went dog sledding, which they loved! No pictures of snow today because they took the camera. Apparently, the dogs are on a diet of 9,500 calories a day, and consider 20 miles a sprint! The front dogs are the fastest, and are pace setters, while the back two are the strongest. The middle ones contribute to the pulling, but don't have a secondary role.

Below are pictures of a frozen reservoir they walked out on to. It was 65 metres deep, and covered by just 3 feet of ice. You can see a picture of the crack in it, and it's pretty easy to make out the water below. Madness!

Snowboarding was great; we actually didn't make a fool out of ourselves when we went into the terrain park, but I lost pretty badly in the race - twice! I'll post a few general pics of Banff in the next post, and then that's it

Lessons that day were good. We did quite a few blues, and Jon and I hit a green we'd done before, but veered off (on purpose!) on to a blue and through some trees and funky bits. We did a black diamond tree run, which made me insanely happy. It was as powdery and difficult as you'd expect, with the odd icy patch and exposed rock to throw you - literally. I couldn't believe how steep it was; standing straight, your back was practically touching the powder behind you.

We also did the 'rollercoaster', which was fun - essentially a straight BMX track for snowboards and skis.

The most memorable part of the day was taking the Divide lift up to the very top. As we did so, we crossed into British Columbia, which was quite cool! One of the runs we took after this lift (we took two from that lift) was were I had my worst crash, which scratched my lens up and left me with a bad shoulder for a day or two. We were practicing with hands behind our backs, on fairly icy snow, and I caught my heel while on toe edge and flipped. Bugger.

Looking at the Divide lift, on Lookout Mountain, from the top of Strawberry, on Mount Standish

Me at the top!

Jon at the top!

We took this route (just to the right)

And again, the route just to the right of the green straight ahead in this photo

The weather up this high was something else. At one point, our instructor warned one of the guys in our group that the tip of his nose had turned white (the immediate precursor to frostbite). The descents were really steep, but the snow wasn't too icy, even at this height and in this temperature.

Next update will be two parts also; mum and dad's dog sledding, and our riding at Norquay.