I’m a little behind on my posts again, Eep! Luckily we’ve got a super long train journey to Vancouver, so I’m using the time to catch up again. The view is fantastic and Duke Dumont is pumping, so think the next few hours are gonna be pretty sweet; but more on that later. First, let’s catch up….
The main event of the last few days was Cross-Country skiing.
The original plan was to go early Thursday & be out all day, but I was shattered; so we weren’t out til midday. We popped to the shop to grab last minute train supplies then headed to Canmore Nordic Centre. We’d been recommended the “Goat Creek” trail, so we enquired about that – turns out it’s not actually in the Centre & just a few km up the road instead. It’s not groomed as regularly, so is a free access trail. (Luckily we asked this before paying our C$15pp trail fee – so a cheeky saving there. Plus she gave us a trail map to help us find our way, and we all know how I love a map!)
Next stop was the rental shop for our gear. The rental was just for the day, but clearly my love of a discount has been rubbing off on Etienne, who encouraged me to ask if we could have them for 24 hours, as we were planning to squeeze a sesh in the next morning. A few sweet smiles & thankyou’s later, we’d secured our skis til the following afternoon at no extra cost. (Yay!) 🤑
So off we went with our newly acquired map & ‘yes-you-can-keep-them-24-hours’ skis & about 20mins later we were at the trail. It probably should have been 10, but some confusion on the directions set us back a bit… Turns out roads aren’t on trail maps, so they’re not the best for navigating by car.
We then zoomed* off on our skis! The trail was perfect, we could hear the river at the base of the valley for almost the entire time and we were tucked in the woods in the mountains – just how you’d imagine The Rockies. We passed a few people on the way who gave us tips on the easier trail (keep right!) and a heads-up on a good lunch spot. We reached the spot, which was right by the river, and munched our pre-prepared sandwiches & sort-of-still-frozen Ice Cream which we’d brought along, then made our way back to the car. A lovely route; definitely competing with our earlier jaunts in Gatineau Park.**
The next day (yesterday from the time of writing this) was a bit more rushed. I worked til 9am plus we needed to check-out, but we headed to Banff & did a quick hour or so on the “Spray River West” trail. It wasn’t as scenic but was a wide path with some long, gentle slopes so was good to practice & pretty sure we were even more Zoomy this time around… annoyingly we forgot to set Strava, so no proof of this though!
Once we returned the skis, we had a long old drive to Edmonton (4 or 5 hours). We dumped our bags at the station, then headed into town to return the Communauto & wait out the evening; we weren’t departing til midnight! (😣) We’d found a little place online called The Cactus Club which had great reviews… we didn’t book but luckily they squeezed us in. The food was gorgeous. We had a ‘Tuna Stack’ to start, which Etienne has promised he’ll make at home one day, then shared a Creole Chicken & Mediterranean Bowl – all of it was sooo good. After dinner we grabbed a drink at the bar next door & played some pool til it was time for our train. A quick Uber later & we were following the guard to our seats, marking the end of Alberta adventure!
*Zoomed is obviously a subjective word, but from a Strava analysis later that day we confirmed our pace was 12min/km. Feel free to decide for yourself if that counts as Zoominess. 😅
**Gatineau Park Cross-country: Think these were pre-blog. I was hoping to write some catch-up posts & include these, but turns out a blog takes longer than you’d think, so I’ve not got round to it yet!
