Page 4 of 5
Calgary, Alberta
But frozen things they all unfreeze, and now I taste like all those frozen strawberries I used to ice your bruisy knees
Due north of Montana, on the prairie but only an hour (or so) east of the front range of the Canadian Rockies, Calgary is Alberta's largest city and a reasonably cosmopolitan outpost in a generally empty western province. An interesting downtown district, a local NHL team (which was playing away games both times I was there this past winter), a climate which feels right for its location (but damn cold for anyone who has seen better) and public amenities like free outdoor skating at almost every opportunity work together to make you try and forget that you're all the way up in Alberta in the dead cold of winter.
The most distinctive piece of the Calgary Skyline (other than those distant Rockies) is the Calgary Tower, a 60 story Space Needle wannabe with a birds eye view of the city. Most impressive is an addition to the tower where its glass walls, its ceiling and its floor allow visitors (like me) to step back from the original tower walls and feel like I'm floating some fifty stories above Ninth Avenue. Fun.
An hour west from Calgary, Banff National Park is a world class, world heritage site and far and away the best thing to see in Alberta (take that, everything else in Alberta). The park is situated at the front range of the Canadian Rockies and is intersected by the Trans Canadian Highway, making the hour ride up from Calgary not all that bad (especially if you don't count the snowdrifts that drove all those other cars that spun off the highway and into the ditches). And while this is not the first time I have been to Banff, it was the first time I had been there in the cold dead winter, where even the view from my rear view mirror was filled shoulder to shoulder with icy peak after icy peak.
I chose to rent an SUV (a Denali I believe), the largest, bulkiest vehicle I have ever driven in my life. At first in Calgary it seemed excessive, most of the roads were clear and the feared snow and ice seemed limited to parking lots and side roads. As I headed up to Banff the roads were generally good except for patches where aggressive snow drifts covered the highway, but as I headed into the park the conditions steadily worsened. First the shoulders were covered, then the roads just had clear tracks and then even those tracks became snow covered. Luckily the virtually unparkable behemoth I was driving had no problem as the uphill road's conditions went downhill, even on the steep grades that led up from the highway all the way to Lake Louise.
I did not have nearly the time at Banff that I had hoped, my schedule is what it is and none of the trips (whether to Calgary, San Juan or even Iowa) are rarely as long as I would plan or hope. Still with limited time and limited daylight I took the trouble and made the time to drive another hour deeper into the park to Lake Louise, one of the park's few all weather five star attractions. In the warmer months, the lake is an amazing light blue jewel surrounded by a ring of snow capped peaks, while in the winter the snow from those snow capped peaks extends right on down to the trees and lake and trails. And while that amazing light blue jewel of a lake may be hidden by all that white, the surrounding mountains and trees and trails do their snow covered best to make you forget all that blue underneath.
On three and a half sides of Lake Louise is unparalleled scenery while the back side of this first photo the scenery is somewhat blocked by a massive hotel, Fairmont's Chateau Lake Louise. The presence of the hotel allows a level of activity and recreation to spill from its lobby and head right out to the frozen lake. There are cross country ski rentals (and free shuttles to the nearby world class downhill runs), snowshoes for rent, hot cocoa at the ready and right out in the middle of the family skating area (the hockey nets were just east of here) a well designed (though slowly collapsing) ice castle. A nice unexpected touch, although (of course) no match for the lake or mountains or park.
One last blurry Banff picture, this time from Banff Avenue in the heart of the Banff town site, where even during the civil twilight of a dark, cold night, it's still damn hard to escape the presence of the mountains.
