Arriving in Banff was a bit of a shock to the system after living in small towns for the last few months. Banff isn’t a large town, but it is a massive tourist destination, so it’s very busy and full of shops trying to sell you all sorts of tourist shite. That took a bit of getting used to after the slow pace of the last couple of months. I’d previously got the same feeling arriving in Queenstown from Wanaka. We settled in quickly enough, helped by finding an excellent restaurant specialising in Asian food, where I had a great Green Chicken Curry that actually had some spice in it (spicy food being a bit of a novelty in Canada it seems)!

We spent our first day riding Sunshine Village which wasn’t too bad. They’d had a dump of snow overnight, so there was powder around, but that was offset by the fact that it was bloody windy, so you’d be riding through nice powder only to come to a windblown patch which was rock hard. Also, sitting on the chair lifts wasn’t pleasant!

The next two days were in the famous Lake Louise which was pretty good. There was plenty of varied terrain to keep us occupied and the snow cover was good too. Paul’s snowboarding book noted that Lake Louise was a great place to learn to ride park, but when we went looking for it we soon found out that the beginner park wasn’t there this season. I guess I’ll have to wait until Whistler then – gives me time to practice my switch riding!