Lake Louise (April 11 – 13)

April 11th 

My last day in Canmore, I was glad to be moving on and seeing something new. Don’t get me wrong I did have a great time in Canmore but I felt I’ve done everything I wanted to do here. That also goes for the town of Banff, the tourist town got pretty boring quick. But before I left I did one more ski at the Canmore Nordic Centre for good times. After that I pretty much headed straight to Lake Louise, a pretty scenic drive I found, especially with the Bow River right next to me.

I made it to the hostel and met my other fellow 3 dorm roommates for the night. Two of them were guys in grad school from Toronto attending a convention at the Chateau. They were Charles and Dan, Dan was doing his PhD in immunology, his research was looking at the acute response of heart cells to the first stage of a viral infection. What he basically did was mash up the heart cells of virally infected mice, and looked at the chemical responses of the cells in response to the viral infection (which is a general response at the beginning, then later the body forms specific responses in the form of like white blood cells).

The other guy was by far the most interesting individual I’ve met. His name was Bill, coming out of Jackson, Wyomming. He was here doing Alpine Touring all by himself, basically hiking out on top of glaciers and mountains peaks and skiing down by himself – and he is 58. Bill, myself, and Daniel talked through the night, or I should say Bill talked most of the night. He was a super cool guy, who unfortunately just had a divorce and doesn’t have a place yet to stay back home so he came up here to alpine ski. He works as a seasonal fire technician for the Forest Service and U.S. national parks battling forest fires. Also he worked as a park ranger in the past. His credentials include being an alpine touring ski instructor and a Nordic ski instructor as well. He talked nearly all night about different things, but mostly about his many skiing adventures which sounded pretty awesome.

April 12 

I forgot to mention one funny story that Bill told us. It was about this young 18 year old that stayed in the same dorm room as me (but before I arrived). He lost his right leg from bone cancer, but finished in the Top 5 of a downhill paraplegic downhill race that earned him a spot on the Canadian Olympic team. He was telling me the kid got so drunk (tons of beer cans were strewn around the dorm room and he went out drinking after that too), that he lost his medals and trophies that night. When the kid got back to the dorm room really late, he didn’t even make to his bed. But he did manage to step on his new Mac Book (a high school graduation gift) and snap the screen off completely. The way Bill had told the story was super hilarious with his impression of the kid.

Today I did a simple xc skiing route near Lake Louise. I did a half ass job of cleaning and changing my grip wax on my skis that resulted in a shitty ruined ski at the end. Halfway through my trip I had to stop a lot and scrap off piles of snow underneath my skis. After that I was kind of tired and just drove around the Banff area to take pictures, didn’t really get any good spots (because they were closed for the winter) – but just a few at the Bow River near the bridge of Hwy 93.

April 13, 2011 

I got up, and Bill and the new roommate (Aushwin) from Toronto were talking. They had interesting conversations, Bill was talking about how displeased he was with everything that was going in the US government and American conservative society. Oh there was one pretty funny story (well not at the time), of when Bill got chased away from his jeep by the Crips gang in Tacoma. He was saved by a black group of Muslims (the Cripps didn’t mess with them), who requested a donation – to which he gave them the 40 bucks in his wallet.

Anyways after eating breakfast, I said goodbye to Bill and headed out for some snowshoeing up a lookout point of Lake Louise. It was an Ok view (and I forgot my memory stick for my camera), but I saw xc ski tracks across the lake. So I decided afterwards to go back and grab my xc skis and ski across the lake, which was super fun! The view was spectacular, and skiing across a lake for my first time was unforgettable.

Today I met my new roommate (who replaced Bill). His name is Thomas, who came from Denmark. I told him I was heading to Jasper tomorrow, which he replied that he was heading there tomorrow and was planning on hitch-hiking. Well since I was heading there anyways I offered to give him a ride. So far my trip has been filled with pretty cool people from different backgrounds and with different stories. It is a shame that some of us never venture out in life, especially those that don’t do so by choice.