A Weekend in Canmore

January 15, 2025January 15, 2025 / Maria / Leave a comment

I’m very much a type A personality planner, but every now and then I love going on a spontaneously planned trip. Carolyn and I seem to have gotten in the habit of taking an impulsive Fall getaway every other year (which has included a half marathon in Vegas and an impromptu trip to see a cancelled Harry Styles concert in LA). This year we set our sights a little closer to home and decided to make a quick trip out to the Rocky Mountains.

We booked a flight to Calgary two weeks before the trip, which was honestly a little more expensive than we would have liked, but we got a really good deal on the car rental and hotels. Canada needs more competition in the airline industry and a few new companies have been popping up over the years. We flew Flair, so our base fare was pretty reasonable, but they really gouge you on baggage fees. To save money, we paid for one full size carry-on between us and each took a personal item. It was a bit of a struggle, but my 34L Gossamer Gear backpack is able to fit in the personal item sizer, so I’ll definitely be taking advantage of that in the future to save money!

We made it to Calgary and after an argument at the rental agency, picked up our rental car. The company tried to force us to rent an AWD SUV when they learned we were driving to Canmore. It’s a good practice to have winter tires or minimum mud and snow tires for winter driving, but they’re not strictly required on Highway 1 to Banff (but if you’re going beyond Lake Louise, you do need them). They were adamant we had to have AWD and we continually declined. It’s a tactic I’m sure they use (successfully) on a lot of tourists to make extra money. In this case, they were sold out of the economy car we had booked and were trying to force us to pay for the AWD SUV they were going to give us anyway (with mud and snow tires). So we ended up with it at no extra charge through sheer force of will. But I thought the whole charging strategy was really scummy and the agent was pretty rude when we weren’t co-operative, so I’m definitely calling out Enterprise!

After a quick sleep at the Super 8 airport hotel, we were up early to drive to Canmore. I have a few friends that live in Calgary and we planned to meet them at Lake Minnewanka for a hike. The weather forecast looked great and was primarily sun and clouds with no precipitation, but it was really overcast and it started raining just before we got to the parking lot. The rain quickly turned to a wet snow, which wasn’t super appealing. Our friends blamed us for bringing the poor weather from “raincouver”, but I think they were just exaggerating how it’s “always sunny in Calgary” – sounds like Alberta propaganda to me!

It wasn’t the best conditions by a long shot and the clouds were really low, obscuring the view, but we went on the hike anyway. It became less about the views and more about catching up with friends. Plus, I finally got to meet my internet friend, Kristine, for the first time and the trip somehow ended with her convincing me to go on another trip with her later this year!

The snow was definitely nicer than the rain, but it made for a cold hike! We were aiming to stop for lunch at a campground, but eventually we’d had enough of the wet, cold weather, and pulled into the woods for a lunch break. After that we turned around to return to the parking lot, tracking ~8km in total.

But we wouldn’t be deterred by a bit of wet weather! We drove to Canmore and stopped in a café for hot drinks and snacks, before heading to our hotel to take advantage of the hot tub! We had a nice soak before saying goodbye to our friends, who returned to Calgary. Me and Carolyn decided to go for a nice meal at Fergus & Bix, which was easily the highlight of the trip food-wise! We had to make the most of having access to Alberta’s famous beef, so I had the most delicious blue cheese burger and Carolyn had a steak salad.

While we mostly had hiking in mind when we booked this trip, both of us were in need of a good break, so we decided to take it easy on our second day. We slept in and then walked into town for brunch, before going for a walk along the Bow River. It was a gorgeous blue sky, sunny day, though quite crisp. We had a nice long walk and spent the afternoon shopping around town. I managed to show some self restraint in Café Books, which is a great little indie bookshop, but my resolve completely crumpled in Canmore Tea Co. I’m a pretty big tea enthusiast and try to get most of my teas from local shops. Canmore and Banff Tea Co are both great and have several teas that I absolutely love! So I stocked up on my favourites and then picked out a few new ones to try. Carolyn assisted me by holding all my purchases while loudly proclaiming how crazy I was for spending so much money on tea.

Before it got dark, we decided to go for a little drive around town to some shorter viewpoints. We walked out to the Three Sisters Viewpoint, which has a great view of the iconic trio that Canmore is known for (the little, middle, and big sister mountains). We continued our drive up Spray Lakes Road to take some photos of Rundle and Ha Ling Peak, before returning to town for dinner. We ended up eating supper at Tavern 1883, which was really tasty, but definitely more pub vibes. But nothing that couldn’t be remedied with another trip to the hotel hot tub!

On our final day, we pretty much just returned to Calgary to get a noon flight back to Vancouver. So overall, it was a very short trip and it seemed like we didn’t do a whole lot, but I really enjoyed just kicking back and spending some time with Carolyn. It was nice not having a big itinerary planned and we pretty much did whatever we felt like. I’ve been to Canmore many times, but it was Carolyn’s first time, so we did a lot of the classic touristy things. Our friends recommended a lot of other great hikes to us, but given that we’d never even seen a lot of the viewpoints before, we were happy to take it easy. I love spending time in the Rocky Mountains and this was the only trip I made there in 2024, so I’m glad we were able to fit in a little getaway!

Hiking Johnston Canyon

April 6, 2022April 6, 2022 / Maria / 1 Comment

Johnston Canyon is a quintessential hike if you’re visiting Banff National Park, and the great news is you can hike it all year round! I thought I’d been there once before in the summer, but after visiting on this trip, I think this was actually the first time. It’s located about halfway between Sunshine Village and Lake Louise, but it can be a bit tricky to get to.

It’s not off the main highway, but instead located on the Bow Valley Parkway, which runs parallel to Highway 1. It’s just a one-lane highway and it’s not in the best shape, so assume a much slower pace than driving on the main highway. You can enter the Parkway from just past Banff, or at the turn for Highway 93 that runs down towards the Kootneys. I’m not sure what the deal with the road is, but the exit outside of Banff isn’t always open, so even though you have to do a bit a backtracking, sometimes you have to go all the way to the second turn off to get on the Parkway (as was the case when we visited). It was disappointing because it results in a longer journey, though with the speed you can try on Highway 1 I’m not convinced it’s shorter on the Parkway. But I’ve heard the Parkway is incredibly scenic, so I’m sad we didn’t get to drive the whole thing.

In any case, Johnston Canyon is a pretty popular place to visit and it’s nice that you can hike it all year round. There will be snow in the winter, and though it’s all packed down from the frequent traffic, microspikes or cleats are definitely required, especially on some of the uphill and downhill sections. We brought our own spikes with us, but if you’re just visiting, you can rent them from any of the outdoor equipment stores in Banff. There were a few people without them, but actually most people had some kind of traction and they were all very similar, so I assume most people were using the rented cleats.

In the summer, I think you may need to get there early to secure parking, but it wasn’t a problem in the winter. Since it’s a shorter trail, there should also be a lot of turnover in the lot. The trail hikes through the forest and then along the side of the steep walls of the canyon. In many cases you go right through the canyon on grated walkways that are bolted to the side of the canyon wall. It’s a little scary in winter because the snow elevates the trail, meaning the rails only come up to about mid-thigh, so use caution when navigating some of the narrower parts of the canyon. A few times we waited for people to pass coming in the opposite direction so as not to crowd the trail.

There’s lots to see along the way and we really enjoyed all the frozen waterfalls and ice structures that form along the side of the canyon. The first big attraction is the lower falls, which you descend down to and cross a bridge before walking through a short tunnel to get an even better view of the river and the lower falls. It’s quite unique, which is how I knew I hadn’t been there before. The tunnel is cool and we hung around for a bit watching the falls. The surface of the falls looks frozen, but the river is still running underneath, so it creates this cool, half frozen pool at the base.

Some people just go as far as the lower falls and then turn back, but we decided to continue on to the upper falls. You go past several more waterfalls along the way and before you get to the upper falls, there is a path through the woods to go down to the river. At the right time of year, you can walk on the river to the upper falls. We opted not to because we could see a lot of dicey sections from the moving water along the river, but lots of people were walking on the ice, so I assume it was relatively safe. It’s a gentle uphill most of the walk to the falls and then when you finally reach the upper falls, there’s a big viewpoint looking down on them.

The upper falls were completely frozen this time of year, but we had the added benefit of getting to watch ice climbers! Turns out it’s a popular location for ice climbing and there were several groups climbing along different sides of the multiple ice faces. Ice climbing is definitely a sport that is too intense for me, but it’s really interesting to watch other people do it, so we settled down for our lunch and enjoyed watching the climbers while we ate. The trail was relatively busy, but manageable. We were able to see what we wanted to see and while there was a good number of people, it wasn’t crazy crowded. It was a weekday though, so it might be worse on the weekends and I’m sure it’s a lot busier in the summer.

All in all, the hike was approximately 5km to the upper falls and back, with about 130m in elevation. So it’s definitely a great hike for beginners and had a really interesting topography. But as always, exercise caution when going on any hike, especially in the cold season. We had a good time and I’m glad I got to cross this popular hike off my list.

Ski Resort Series: Lake Louise

March 30, 2022March 30, 2022 / Maria / 1 Comment

Lake Louise was undoubtedly the most popular of the Banff resorts when we visited. I suspect it draws the most tourists because of its association with the famous lake, as well as it also attracts a lot of locals to its open alpine skiing and back bowls. Plus, the awesome views of the surrounding mountains don’t hurt!

Lake Louise is about a 45 minute drive from Banff, so it is the furthest, though I regularly drive 2 hours to Whistler each way in a single day, so I didn’t find the drive too bad. There are some accommodations in Lake Louise if you’re just there to ski and want to stay nearby, but then I think your restaurant choices would be a lot more limited than if you stayed in Banff.

Of the three resorts, I found Lake Louise had the most confusing parking. Norquay and Sunshine have straightforward massive lots, but Lake Louise has several smaller lots and several sections of the lot are allocated specifically for VIPs or pay parking. Clearly we weren’t VIPs and we didn’t want to pay, so we ended up parking in the road parking – it wasn’t a long walk to the resort, but the longest of the 3 resorts and we were annoyed to walk past the huge empty VIP lot right next to the lodge.

Lake Louise had a pretty different set-up than Sunshine. At Sunshine, I found a lot of the lifts went to the same locations but had different bases from which to board at the bottom. Whereas at Lake Louise, a lot of the lifts left from the same central area at the bottom and went to different parts of the mountain, which I think is a bit preferable. The main difference is that the Lake Louise base is at the same elevation as the highway, whereas at Sunshine you take a gondola up to the base and at Norquay you drive several switchbacks up the mountain. As a result, I found the ski conditions at Lake Louise were unfortunately, the worst of the 3 mountains.

It’s partially because of the weather and timing of when we visited that we didn’t get any powder, but overall, I found Louise to be icier because it’s a lower elevation mountain. I also found the runs to be more confusing because it’s a lot of alpine, so there’s not really any discernible runs in a lot of locations. In some ways I really liked that because you could really ski wherever you wanted, but it also made it hard to figure out where you were and we ended up going down a few more advanced runs because we got lost. Not that big a deal, but since it was an icy day, it wasn’t the best conditions for challenging yourself.

So it was a bit of a rough start as we figured out the mountain, but we did still have a good time. We started off on Glacier chair and did a few runs on the Top of the World chair before going up Summit chair once to see the view from the highest point. I liked this area, but it’s where we kept making mistakes and ended up down a gully a few times. One of the biggest attractions at Lake Louise is the back bowls, which is pretty much just all free black run skiing. My biggest regret is that we didn’t ski the back bowl in the morning when we had fresh legs and decent visibility. We were a little bit intimidated by it and there’s so much to explore, so we decided to save it for later.

After a few runs up at the top we switched over to the Grizzly gondola and explored around some of the bottom part of the mountain. Lake Louise is deceivingly large. Sunshine Village felt large because the lifts are spread out and there’s so many different areas, whereas Lake Louise is more concentrated, but still has a lot of runs, many of which I think are longer than at Sunshine. We didn’t do as many runs in the morning, mostly because it was just taking us longer to do each run.

We had decided to buy lunch at Lake Louise, which was a good decision because packed lunches aren’t allowed in the Lodge of Ten Peaks (though you can eat them at Whiskeyjack Lodge). The nice thing about Louise was that there were several lodges, I don’t know how busy it was over at Temple Lodge, but we found Lodge of Ten Peaks to be a lot less crowded than at Sunshine.

In the afternoon we made our way over towards the backside of the mountain to get the areas we hadn’t yet explored. We did a few runs on Ptarmigan chair and a few on Larch chair. I ended up really liking the Larch area, likely because it had some easier runs, or maybe because they are more well defined. I think I would really like Lake Louise if I got to ski it more often, but because I only had one day, I wanted to get a lot a variety and in the alpine, I guess I felt like I was just skiing the same thing run after run. It’s why it’s nice to have more than one day at a ski resort, because you get to try everything on the first day, and then return to areas you liked or try things you missed on the second day.

Emily wasn’t really keen to do the back bowls at all, but like Goat Mountain at Sunshine, I still really wanted to tackle every part of the mountain, so I convinced her to do one run with me. We got to scope it out a bit more on the Paradise chair, which runs up the back of the mountain, and I think on a good powder day I would be pretty comfortable skiing in the back bowl (at least in the area under Paradise chair, which is black diamonds as opposed to double blacks). Unfortunately, our mistake was waiting too late in the day. We took the one easy run down the back bowl, but it had really bad flat light when we did it and we felt like we were skiing blind, so we weren’t inclined to try a second run, hence why I say I wish we’d done it in the morning.

Anyways, sometimes you live and learn. We still ended up having a great time at Lake Louise and surprisingly Emily liked it more than me. I can’t really pinpoint why, but of the three, Lake Louise was probably my least favourite. I may get slammed for that because not a lot of people seem to like Norquay, so I’m inclined to blame the weather on this occasion (we got some great powder at Norquay). In any case, I won’t be too quick to judge it and I would definitely return to try it again and properly ski the back bowl. Overall I think it might just be the vibe that I got from Lake Louise. It was more crowded and seemed a bit more elitist than the others, so I’d be just as happy to ski at Sunshine or Norquay as well. Either way, it’s definitely an iconic resort.