Banff – Riveted

We’re Home

Laura Domela — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 03:27:35 +0000

I know. Bor. Ing. Except this time it's NOT boring, it's awesome. I'll share some stuff (and some photos I forgot to post from our trip) soon.

In the meantime, look at this cool photo Kyle took of us all, dining at the Athabasca glacier where we were camped for the night!

Good Morning Banff!

Laura Domela — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 12:53:35 +0000

Sulphur Mountain Gondola, Banff

Laura Domela — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 20:44:07 +0000

Today we headed over to the Sulphur Mountain Gondola to get a nice bird's eye view of Banff and the surrounding mountains. We'd done this once before and convinced Tiffani and Deke and Kyle Bolstad that it was worth it. Luckily, they agreed.

We waited in line a bit to get the gondola up to the top (takes about 8 minutes to go ~5000ft). At the top there's a large building that houses the gondolas, a gift shop, a snack bar, and the panorama restaurant. From there you can walk a series of boardwalks/stairs to get to the cosmic ray station (that once was the highest elevation tea house in North America I think, at over 7500 feet).

Looking back at the main building:

The town of Banff, from above:

Me, doing what I do:

After hanging out gawking at the incredible views for a bit (well, and taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi, geeking out on our smart phones at the top of a 7500 ft mountain), we decided to have some lunch in the panorama restaurant and gawk at the views a bit more while we ate:

The food was actually quite good! Kevin and I both had prawn tacos and thought they were delicious.

After lunch we headed back down the side of the mountain. Gondola shadow selfie on the trees:

We're back at the campground now just chillin' a bit. I think we're grilling burgers tonight (with bacon and blue cheese, because how else are you supposed to do it if you're going to splurge on a burger?)

Tomorrow about half of our group (or more) heads south to Glacier/Montana, while some of us will head north toward Jasper on Monday. Our plan is to stop over one night somewhere along the Icefields Parkway and do a little bit of glaciering, and then arrive at Jasper on Tuesday.

I think we've got another group portrait scheduled for this evening while we're still all together.

Happy Saturday!

Lake Louise and the Two Tea Houses

Laura Domela — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 02:43:35 +0000

This morning some of our group coordinated and drove up to Lake Louise to do some hiking. There were 12 or so of us who decided we'd hike to the tea house at Lake Agnes (and from there figured we'd decide based on how we felt if we wanted to take the 7 mile add-on to go to the second tea house — Plain of Six Glaciers). Here's some info about the tea house hikes if you're curious.

The hike to the Lake Agnes tea house splits off from Lake Louise and heads up through some nice forested scenery for about 3.5 km to the tea house with some pretty good elevation gain. Once you're at the teahouse you climb a steep set of stairs to get there and then you're at this crazy little structure in the middle of the mountains where you can sit and have some tea and some soup or sandwiches or cookies. All the food is packed in on horseback and everything is cooked on propane stoves…there's no electricity or running water.

Mirror Lake, just before the last climb up to the tea house:

The stairs looking down:

The tea house at Lake Agnes:

We had sandwiches and a cup of soup and some tea. At that point, six of us decided we'd head on and do the rest of the hike over to the Plain of Six Glaciers and wow were we glad we did.

Big Beehive:

Lake Louise from the trail:

At some point along the trail we noticed a group of canoes down in the lake and could hear the distress whistles blowing even from this far away. A canoe had capsized and other canoes were rallying around trying to get the occupants out of the water before hypothermia set in. We took photos (and wished them well from a distance, of course):

That water is no joke cold!

Nice orange:

This trail was incredible. The weather got kinda crappy (and eventually rained and hailed on us) but it was still completely worth the trek. (Tiny red dot in the middle is a person on the trail, for scale):

It's really just the last part of this hike that's difficult. The steepness of the switchbacks plus the hail and rain made us really step up our pace so we were pretty tired (and soaked) when we got to the top. Here's the tea house in the rain:

It's such a nice, inviting atmosphere though:

We ordered chocolate cake and I had a ginger chai latte and Kevin had a mocha and we sat right there with this view and warmed up:

Cute (but a little bit stinky) outhouses:

I love this part of the trail:

A little bit of a washout on the trail:

The way back took us down to the back end of the lake and as we progressed, the weather improved (bonus!)

Back at the lake:

I just can't get enough of this color:

View from the end of our hike, right where we started:

According to our Fitbits (and one of our group's handheld GPS), the stats for this hike were: 9.5 miles, 238 floors climbed (approximately 2,380 feet), over 21,000 steps, lunch at one tea house and dessert at the other, and 1,538 calories burned. Not bad.

Our drive back to Banff was gorgeous…the weather was nice, the sky was blue and the clouds were puffy and OMG these mountains! We're so glad to be back here.

We got back to camp around 6:30pm, had a quick shower, and then 11 of us headed into town to have a beer and some dinner at the Banff Avenue Brewing. There are now 10 Airstreams here in our group! We met up with Kyle as soon as we arrived, and the Wandrly crew arrived today as well. We'll try to get some good group photos tomorrow to post later on.

Glacier to Banff

Laura Domela — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 13:03:44 +0000

We had a gorgeous drive yesterday from Glacier to Banff and now we're all here together at another beautiful place. It rained a bit yesterday but I think some hiking is on the agenda for today.

Set up at Banff:

Today's office view:

Banff National Park

Laura Domela — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 12:41:43 +0000

Here's where we'll be in about two weeks (after a couple stops at Aluminogan, Kelowna, and Glacier): Banff National Park. We took these photos when we were there the first time (with our 2005 22' International Airstream).

We can't wait to see this gorgeous area again!