Hi all!
Sorry about the delay between posts...
Over the weekend, I went up to Lake Louise with a few friends.
We travelled into the mountains on Saturday and went skiing at the Lake Louise ski hill. We had good weather for most of the morning (not too cold or windy), but just before lunch it started to snow a little. But after lunch, it cleared and was even more gorgeous than the morning!! We had sunny blue skies and no wind. It was gorgeous!
A few of us booked ourselves into The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, which is situated on the edge of the lake.
For those of you who don't know, there are a number of hotels that make up The Fairmont Hotel chain (and includes The Savoy in London). In Canada, the hotels were built close to the Canada Pacific railway. There are a number of them in Canada (Vancouver, Calgary, Banff, Toronto, Montreal) and the hotels in the mountains were apparently built to attract tourists from the east to come to the Rockies. The Chateau Lake Louise opened in 1890.
It has beautiful decor and large windows that overlook the lake.
It is a fancy hotel, but we managed to get discounted rates for the rooms. It was lovely! I didn't want to leave my room! Except the hotel has gorgeous tea rooms, dining rooms and bar areas.
In Calgary, before Christmas, a group of friends and I had an afternoon tea at the Fairmont Hotel in Calgary. The food at these hotels is fantastic!!
Anyway! Sunday morning we went for an ice skate on the lake and had a look at the ice sculptures that are sculpted every winter and on display. The lake is a popular tourist destination, so it wasn't exactly quiet skating around and the area was smaller than expected, but it is now ticked off my list! It is a truly beautiful location too.
(Taken with my phone during the evening)
After a lazy cup of tea, a couple of us went to Johnston Canyon on the way back to Calgary. Johnston Canyon has an easily traversable pathway that follows the canyon and is accessible most of the year. The creek and falls freeze over in parts of the creek (and parts of the year), and when we were there, the face / outside of the falls were frozen, with water still falling / running behind the wall of frozen ice... it was incredible to see.
The Canyon is split into upper falls and lower falls, and at the upper falls, there is a wall of ice where a lot of people go ice climbing.
Once again, we were spoilt with beautiful sunny weather.
After a weekend like that, I didn't want to have to return to Calgary and the reality of work on Monday, but sadly, it was necessary!
This coming weekend will be very quiet in comparison! I will save up the adventures & site-seeing for another weekend.
Love Kate
xoxo
Photos below are of Johnston Canyon (playing with the settings of my new camera!)
Water falling behind frozen wall (Lower Falls)
Upper Falls
Upper Falls
People ice climbing at the upper falls
More photos at Lake Louise...
View from my hotel room (ski runs in the distance)
At Lake Louise... thought that it looked cool with the sun behind the mountain
