What is a trip to the rockies without visiting Banff? Although the town seems to only be comprised of touristy restaurants, outdoor shops, and heliski operations it still definately has some charm. The town is set deep in a valley surrounded by towering mountains with huge relief, making the landscape quite dramatic. Visiting Banff also gave us the chance to meet up with Marie's cousin Stephanie (who lives in Canmore). After a tasty lunch we hit up some of the local sites. It definately is A LOT quieter in the winter (low) season and we had a lot of the tourist sites to ourselves.
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| Fairmont Banff Springs - that must be expensive. Definitely out of our price range. |
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| Lake Minnewanka |
Our second day in Banff we decided to get out into the mountains again, and ski up high on something mellow. Healy Pass is an area about 10km south from Sunshine Ski Resort and normally done on nordic skis - we had our AT gear (a little heavier) but it worked great on the way down! The tour in took about 3 hours through dense trees and we couldn't see a thing, however, at the end as we approached the pass, we were greeted with amazing views of the peaks surrounding Sunshine mountain. Standing in the pass we had a 360 degree panorama of the dramatic Rocky mountains in all directions. One of the notible features of the pass was the
larch forest - its a conifer, but looses its needles in the winter.
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| The way up had lots of this - trees, with no views |
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| Me and the Larches |
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| Mandatory couple selfie! |
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