Banff (39 – under 43)

Our view of the mountains from
the Tunnel Mountain
campground

When we booked into the campground, we were told we could only stay in the section with full hook up service (connection to electricity, water and sewage) for 3 days because that whole side was being closed for winter. No connection to the internet at all, anywhere in the campground. After the first three days, we only had a 30 amp connection to electricity, no water or sewage connection at our site.


Till now we had always requested a 50 amp connection to power. Thus, I figured that would be OK as we should only need 50 amps when we had to use both air conditioning units running during the peak of summer. Wrong! We could use either our tumble dryer or the washing machine (using the inbuilt water tank and pump) or some electrical appliances etc - lots of experimenting was required with different options and re-setting of the main circuit breaker.

The mountains look a little like
the decals on the Sierra

That evening we drove to the Rimrock Resort, picked up Kristy and brought her to our home for dinner – Dave was working. It was great to catch up and share some of our “happenings”. As Kristy had an early start and I was still winding down from a stressful day, I took Kristy back around 8.30. She said that the weather forecast for the next week or so was going to be unusually warm (we felt like we were dragging a high pressure system around with us – not complaining!) for this time of the year, and we should try to see Lake Louise and Moraine Lake tomorrow as both Dave and her were working.

Lake Louise and Moraine Lake are on a separate blog.

We were able to catch up with Kristy and David quite a few times over the next 6 days, despite the fact they were both working for almost our entire time there. Dave very kindly offered to take the girls to the movies on Tuesday evening while Kristy was working to allow Grace and me to have a night out.



Sunrise on our last morning

 Unfortunately, Banff isn’t really geared up for young kids and the only movie theatre in town didn’t have suitable movies during week nights. Thus Dave took the girls to our Sierra and watched a video while Grace and I went to a restaurant.

Both Kristy and Dave, mostly at different times were able to show us the beautiful township of Banff. It’s only a quite a small place, Banff Avenue is only about 1 kilometre long. No high rise buildings, but terrific restaurants, clothing shops, tourist outlets, museums, pubs etc. In each direction rugged mountains surrounded the township and, despite there being almost no snow visible at all, winter with these snow capped mountains must be a spectacular sight.

Banff Avenue - the main street

I’m not sure of Banff’s base population because I was told anything from 1500 people to almost 8000. In any case, there are a huge amount of transient nationalities contracted to work there for between 6 months and 2 years. Almost each place we went to – shops, restaurants, tourist outlets etc, we heard an Australian accent but there were also many Japanese, Filipinos, Pommies and Chinese. It was rare to find a Canadian accent!

Due to the high transient population, Kristy showed us a great “Thrift” shop that sold high quality, very cheap clothing suitable for the snow. Being a male and not really one that enjoys shopping for clothing, I must admit I was delighted to explore this place as they had almost brand new jackets, boots etc for anything between $7 to $40. Apparently all clothing for sale there was donated, not purchased, hence the low pricing.

The weather was not at all conducive to wear most of what we bought because we were getting sunburnt. Indeed, the girls kept asking when we were going to see snow – perhaps it will now be in Nevada or Utah in December or January, provided we don’t keep pulling the high pressure system around with us! It was actually colder in West Yellowstone than it was in Banff, in the heart of the Canadian Rockies.

An interesting sky that led to nothing

We had a really good time there – Grace even found a shop that sold not only Asian food, but some products specific to the Philippines – courtesy of requests to the grocery store owner from all the Filipinos employed in Banff. Rochelle and I enjoyed 1 ½ hours in a museum that had many of the local animals on display while the others went clothing and grocery shopping.

On our last full day the weather continued to be sunny so we took the opportunity to explore Sulphur Mountain, Fairmont Chateau & the nearby Hoodoos. Sulphur Mountain was our first stop of the day and we were a little concerned about Meryla’s ear problems as the mountain peak is 2,281 metres ( 7496 feet) high. Access to the summit is via a gondola, but much smaller than those we had ridden previously. It only seated 6 people and the girls were told to sit on one side with Grace and I seated opposite, facing them.



Tunnel Mountain is the small "hill" in the centre of the
 photo - Banff is to the left of Tunnel Mt



Grace had convinced Meryla that, from a distance the gondolas seemed to travel quite quickly so her ear problem wouldn’t be too bad during the trip down, as, in terms of time, the trip would be quite short. All those “pearls of wisdom” evaporated immediately for Grace as the gondola lurched forward and we started our journey up the mountain.

She was certainly right about the speed – very much to her absolute fear and, of course, we had empathy for her plight – NOT – we laughed, shrieked with delight and took photos and videos, unfortunately (for Grace) during the first couple of minutes, she was the subject of our attention. Grace just wanted the ride to “SLOW DOWN!”



Then the view, and what a view! We couldn’t see the campground in which we were staying in Tunnel Mountain as it was on the other side. However, Tunnel Mountain looked more like a pimple from where we were. The glorious 360° views will be put in another slideshow on the blog.

From the top gondola station, a path led to the summit and a small hut that used to be a weather observation station from 1903 till 1931. The interior of the hut has been preserved as if Norman Sanson, the meteorologist who climbed the mountain every week or two, had just left for a moment.

The door had been replaced with a sheet of Perspex and the windows sealed. Inside were his bed, some clothing, kitchen utensils etc. It is estimated that Sanson climbed the mountain more than 1000 times, the journey in winter sometimes taking more than 9 hours and they have named the summit in his honour, Sanson Peak. We spent about almost 3 hours exploring and the trip down was far calmer and more enjoyable than the trip up.

Kristy had told us of some ghost stories associated with the Fairmont Chateau hotel so we were keen to have a look. We saw the hotel from the gondola and it is a magnificent looking castle-like structure located near the bottom of Sulphur Mountain, quite an easy drive from where we were.

Rimrock Resort hotel - the height
is very deceiving in this photo -
the rear U section is around 8
stories high

Once there we went in search of some of the locations mentioned in Kristy’s stories. We found the spiral staircase that a bride who was walking to her wedding being held in the hotel, dressed in her wedding dress had fallen to her death after missing a step or tripping on her gown. They apparently have also boarded up another room door as a result of too many sightings and “ghostly” happenings in the room.

There was a gift shop within the hotel that sold a DVD of the Chateau. I asked whether or not the DVD included anything about ghost stories, and she replied that there weren’t any on the DVD, but plenty on the internet. She receives at least 10 similar queries each week about these stories.

Fairmont Chateau

The Hoodoos was our next stop as there were very close to our campground. Despite being a beautiful view of the valley between us and Sulphur Mountain, there were only 3 Hoodoos to be found, very large but from the distance we were, they didn’t appear to have the distinctive cap on top. Perhaps we were spoilt after visiting Writing-on-Stone.


The hoodoos

We were going to leave Banff on Wednesday to head for Kelowna but Sue (my ex – Kristy’s mum) and Ron coincidently were to visit Kristy and Dave for three days and due to arrive on Wednesday evening. They were going to stay in the Rimrock, so for the sake of protocol, I thought it best to say hello to them on Wednesday evening and goodbye to both Kristy and David on the same evening.

That done and wishes for safe travelling exchanged, Thursday saw us heading for Kelowna.