Sneaky Snow Trip to Banff

We spent Tuesday night near Calgary, before driving to Golden on Wednesday.
We stopped in Banff on the way through, and did the Tower Mountain walk. It was pretty good, but only had interrupted views over Banff. We didn't like Banff itself, because it was too touristy for us. But it was nice to stroll there for a half day.

On Thursday we went to Sunshine Village for a snowboard for the afternoon. It was quite a nice ski hill, but not very good for learning to snowboard because there's no wide flattish slopes to practise turns on. So it took me most of the time to get back up to speed. 

Today we drove to Lake Louise to do some hiking. There were no signs with maps at the lake, so I recommend going to the info centre to see if they give out maps, because it was pretty annoying to not really know where we were going. We walked to Lake Agnes, then to the top of the Big Beehive. The walk up was slow and hard because the track was iced in a lot of places. I slipped over twice. 

Lake Louise

We spent 6 hours walking the 11km track. My legs are truly ruined today after snowboarding and then hiking through snow and ice.

The Big Beehive from Lake Agnes

The view from the top was a bit underwhelming after how much effort it took to get there, but it would definitely be better in Summer when you could get closer to the edge without fear of sliding right off the edge on the ice. After we started climbing the Big Beehive we didn't see a single soul until we were over halfway down the other side. It was surreal. We will hopefully come back in high winter to ski on Lake Lousie and then hopefully to do more hiking in the Summer.

The view of Lake Louise from the Big Beehive

We stayed in Golden and drove to the ski hill and to Lake Louise. It would have been fine (about an hour to hour and a half drive), except the road is being widened. The hill is mostly shale and as they have tried to blast through, they have caused land slides and so there are a lot of delays. Every day as we drove back into the mountains from Golden, we would drive through thickest of thick fog before bursting out into a lovely sunshine filled day. 

We have been staying at an AirBnB and getting massive breakfasts, and even dinner tonight. It has been amazing. Tomorrow we head back to Calgary before going home to Fernie.