Bitter Cold Banff

In January Jason and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. How so much time has flown by so quickly, I have no idea. We have talked for years about taking the kids up to Banff so we could show them where we honeymooned but sticker-shock at the price of our honeymoon castle hotel always scared us away. Our twentieth year seemed the perfect year to suck it up and book almost a week at discount, non-refundable prices.

Shortly after the turn of the year I packed up our skis and the car and we headed north through sub-freezing, arctic temperatures to our non-cancellable vacation in a winter wonderland. When we arrived it was -20 degrees Fahrenheit. Brrrrrrr. Our first night there, the temperature sunk to a bone-chilling -35 degrees. We decided we better wait for it to "warm" up before going skiing so we spent a day exploring the hot springs section of Banff National Park. With the temperature hanging around at -15 we didn't last long outside. Luckily we could retreat indoors to see an amazingly colorful and gorgeous underground hot spring.

The following day we braved the weather and headed up to Lake Louise ski area where the temperature hung anywhere between 0 and 5 degrees. Though the views of the mountains were absolutely stupendous, I'm just going to say it now that this was, hands down, the worst day of skiing we have ever experienced. The combination of sub-arctic temperatures, icy cat tracks and lack of snow for anything but icy cat tracks to be open, was heinous. We kept asking ourselves, why did we leave our beautiful little ski town for this? Oh yeah, because the trip was non-refundable.

Click here for photos.