Canmore

To the left is the view from the condo we stayed in over the weekend. We drove up to Canmore on Friday (about three and a half hours) and spent Saturday at Sunshine Village a local ski resort.

I've never been on a ski slope in any sort of capacity, so it was a totally new experience for me. I must admit I was rather put off the whole thing when we parked at the base of the mountain and it was -26c!

I thought it was going to be that cold all day, but fortunately it was 10c warmer at the peak and the sun was shining!

Jim left me in ski school, which I quit at lunchtime! I traded my hired skis for a snowboard which was much more fun. That's me on the right in the red ski jacket trying to get to grips with it. Fortunately the store I bought my ski boots from have agreed to swap them for snowboarding boots.

Yesterday we went to the Banff hot springs, which I had had a rather romantic image of in my head. I was a bit disappointed to discover it wasn't a steaming natural looking rock pool surrounded by snow, but an outside pool full of Japanese tourists! We still went in anyway and it was a little surreal sitting in water that was 39c whilst water droplets on your hair were freezing in the -10c air!

We drove back this morning through snow flurries on the Trans Can and discovered Ralston had had several more inches of the stuff over the weekend. It gets to the point where the only way you can notice there's been more is that the front path needs clearing again!