Once safely arrived in Banff we had to decide how we should spent our just over a day there to make the most of it. We all agreed we had to go up either the Banff or the Jasper gondola, and since we had been blessed with just the most stunning weather from arrival, we thought we'd not tempt fate and would go up the Banff gondola first thing that morning. Banff gondola is separate from the ski hills and exists purely to give you a good view, which, i think you'll agree, it more or less manages:
The Rockies are simply stunning the whole way around, and while i wasn't sure at the time, i'm really glad we went when we did with all the extra snow that you get from heading out there in the spring. It was just breath taking. The down side of all the snow, of course, was that there was still a lot of snow... Getting up the walk way at the top of the gondola was something of an intrepid adventure. Packed snow filled some of the stairways right up to the top of the fence, and with all the footfall it was basically just one icey slide...
We proceeded with caution...
At the top, aside from an awesome vista, we found a "Cosmic Ray Station", whatever one of those things is. It sounds coool. I imagine it's owned by an evil genius with plans to take over the world, but what do i know?
Gondola ticked off our list, we set out to explore some of the other sights Banff had to offer. Just heading down to the end of the road, past the Fairmont (which looks like an enormous Bavarian castle, but alas, i don't have a picture to hand), we went to see the waterfalls. Some how it hadn't occurred to any of us until we got there that perhaps they might be frozen (they were definitely frozen...) , but we got to stand on a giant ice sheet, which was pretty cool.
And the view of the river was beautiful. (I'm goint to start sounding like a stuck record soon - *everything* was beautiful, you can just take that as read from now on... but i fear when I get to the drive up to Jasper, i might have to start telling you that again, repeatedly...)
While we all knew we wanted to go to the hot srpings in the afternoon, we figured we ought to do some sort of work or excercise first in order to fully appreciate it. With that in mind we set out to go on a hike to some other, less frozen, waterfalls, however, through complete ineptitude, and lacking a map, we found a lake instead. I'm not gonna lie, mainly we went there because we thought it had a funny name.
Perhaps we were just pronouncing it wrong, but um, i like to think not.
Our accidental excursion was awwwwweesome. The entire, very large lake was frozen, sufficient that you could walk the whole way across it without trouble. So, this is me stood *on* the middle of a lake. Coooool.
It's a little hard to get a good perspective on how big this like is, but it's pretty damned huge. And those mountains, even huuuuuger. Trust me.
I think there are some tiny people in the back of this picture if you look closely, it might give you an idea...
Anywayz, after a while the novelty wore off and we decided that we would go to the hotsprings whether we deserved it or not. The springs were sort of nice, but not really what i expected. It's a really small pool and humongously crowded. I can't even imagine what the queues must be like in the Summer, if that's what they're like in the Spring (infact that goes for all of the Rockies - must be a bit nuts!). That said, there's very little wrong with relexing in a hot outdoor pool with only mountains and blue skies to fill your view. Mmmm.
Since we were feeling all classy by this point we headed back to the (very very nice) hostel common room and shared the champagne that we picked up in the Okanagan winery. This is the life. What more can I say?!
A few inlets had melted here and there, revealing that gorgeous blue that Canada's lakes are well known for.
The lake all the way around with Hannah at both ends:
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