Mountain Therapy

I love winter....for the most part, because of all the fun activities that are possible in the snow. On saturday my friend nicole and I decided to take advantage of the snow, head down to Banff, and go snowshoeing. It was an early morning for a saturday...but me and "timmy" got through it. Our first trail of the day started with a barracade, but there was no stopping us, we walked to the parking area and started up the mountain. At this point NOT yet wearing the rented snowshoes.....

The going got quite steep as we went on and less and less snowy as we got into more dense forest, at one point we came to a place where we had to climb using ropes, that happened to be there, up a frozen stream that we could see flowing under the ice! So Cool! We kept climbing and then came to these huge frozen waterfalls that were so amazing! At this point i wished i was an ice climber ready with gear..... :(

Still not wearing snowshoes we trudged on...and up...and up....until finally we decided we were not going to find acceptable snowshoe snow and decided to head down and drive to lake lousie where there might be some good trails around the lake. Instead we found an ice carving competition, a pretty neat ice castle on the lake, and TONS of tourists. (Notice the snowshoes stacked in the snow, and not on our feet) We left lake louise determined to find a good trail, so we headed back towards banff to a spot we saw on the way to louise. Here we found what we were looking for. Nice powdery soft snow and a decent trail to follow.

Finally! The snowshoes on our feet. So fun! We met a few cross country skiiers on the way, causing one to see us, get scared and ski directly into the trees. haha..oops.

I guess Nicole got our just reward. Hehe. It WAS her first day in new shoes, and not the snow kind.

We finished the day with the Banff hot springs and some good eats. All in all the exact therapy i needed. We returned home tired but happy. Since we are born with a finite number of breaths, why not use them wisely.