S'no Reason to Stay Inside This Winter
The leaves are down and sight-lines extended. Your breath leaves crystals in the air and you can make snow angels in the moonlight, ride toboggans, skate in and out of the shadows of a bonfire, that’s if you like winter.
Perhaps hard for some to believe but people actually move to Alberta—just for this season.
Here’s why: The No.1 reason most folks love Alberta in the winter is skiing.
Alone or with a group, skiing, both downhill and cross country, is a wonderful activity. There’s virtually nowhere in the province that you can’t cross-country ski, and there are many smaller regional downhill operations, perfect for rookie skiers and those searching for a lower-level physical experience in the great outdoors.
Even on the big mountain ‘hills’, you don’t have to be kamikaze, if you don’t choose to!
The smaller hills are the very best places to learn to ski, especially since many of the offer Learn-to-Ski, Learn-to-Cross-Country and Learn-to-Snowboard courses for raw beginners, and at very attractive prices! For less than $35, you can get an introductory lesson, a day lift ticket and all the rental gear you’ll need at many regional ski areas.
The same courses at mountain resorts are equally good for beginners, but considerably pricier.
“We get lots of positive feedback from our introductory lessons,” says Edmonton Snow Valley Ski Resort manager Jim Hillman. “People are relieved to learn in a safe environment (the hills aren’t as steep as in the mountains!), and people are happy to find out just how easy it is to learn.
“All it takes is a little bit of balance and some desire. Instructors are patient and understanding. And once they have some basic skill, people are amazed at how the advent of the shaped ski has made it so easy to develop to the intermediate level,” says Hillman.
Of course, in addition to learning to ski, you’ll be taught how to use a T-bar and/or chairlifts, which reduces the fear factor when you go to busier mountain resorts.
While we’re still on skiing, cross-country doesn’t have to be physically challenging to be fun. The mountain parks offer a wide range of track-set trails that are often flat and surrounded by forests of lodgepole pine. In Banff National Park, there’s nothing easier or more beautiful than the trail along the shoreline at Lake Louise, and in Jasper National Park, the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge encourages anyone to use its trail around Lac Boisvert. Both parks have many kilometres of gentle, track-set trails in the lower mountain valleys where elevation gain is quite modest.
There are also many regional and municipal cross-country trails in Alberta, some of which are night-lit.
Lace Up Those Blades!
Wherever you go this winter, don’t forget your ice skates!
Aside from community rinks that exist in so many large and small centres, you’ll often run across great opportunities to hop out of your winter boots and just glide around, under the winter sun (or moon!).
The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, for example, encourages everyone, not just guests, to use the skating oval they clear around the shoreline of Mildred Lake. There’s also a rectangular area cleared for shinny. On weather permitting weekends, you’ll even find a bonfire and hot chocolate!
In Banff National Park, look for ‘all-are-welcome’ rinks at the Fairmont Banff Springs and Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise hotels.
You Too Can Walk on Water
Frozen water, that is, and on snowshoes!
Modern snowshoes are a lot different, and quite a bit easier to use, than their clunky precursors. Throughout the province, there are outfitters and adventure operators who sell or rent snowshoes and who offer short lessons in their use.
The nice thing about snowshoes is that you don’t need specific trails or tracks to get away from it all, and because of that, you needn’t go very far to be quite alone with nature. (If you do, take a compass, a map, and some basic survival gear!). Plus, you set your own speed, over terrain that best suits your skill and energy level.
You’ll like it very mush.
Nothing beats the thrill that people experience on their first dogsled ride, says Dana Bittner of Canmore’s Howling Dog Tours.
Like other mushers in the Rocky Mountain area (and in Fort McMurray), Howling Dog will pick you up at your Canmore or Banff hotel, then treat you to a 2 or 4 hour dog sled ride in the Spray Lakes area.
You can help harness the Huskies and hook up the sled. Better still, you can do the mushing (with your guide’s help). There’s hot chocolate and smoked salmon for snacks, and on the longer trips, there may even be fresh, campfire-cooked bannock. They even offer an après-mush package that includes an intimate dinner for two at Canmore’s Sage Bistro with entrees that could include bison ribs, venison meatloaf or rainbow trout.
Dancing Plasma
Sometimes foreigners know best. Take a look at the numbers that flock to northern Alberta to gawk at our skies, most are from abroad.
Anyone who’s seen the Aurora Borealis on a moon-dark night-out in the country, in crisp, unpolluted air, knows that it’s a mind-blowing dancing plasma light show.
Johan Louw, owner of Alta-Can Tours, has offered a three-night, four-day tour for a decade now. He knows just how compelling the Northern Light experience can be.
“This year, one lady is returning for her 10th straight year, and many have been coming for eight years. We even have a group of 11 friends, who met on their first tour eight years ago, and who have returned each year since then for back-to-back tours.”
The tour involves 3.5 star accommodation at Fort McMurray’s Sawridge Inn, an astronomer’s lecture, a class in Northern Light photography, midnight boreal forest walks, fireside wiener roasts, telescope ‘sky tours’ and, of course, nightly Northern Lights viewing.
During the day, operators can make arrangements for you to go snowmobiling, dog sledding, downhill or cross-country skiing. Some even offer aboriginal and/or wilderness experiences.
These Canyons are Very (n)ice!
When Rocky Mountain canyon streams, rivers and creek freeze in the winter, the canyons are transformed into wonderlands of rippling ice forms, often glowing ice-blue or green. Waterfalls become icefalls, and once-roaring rivers are sheeted with ice that’s often thick enough to walk right on top.
Walking these canyons with experienced guides and equipped with cleats and a walking pole to secure your footing, is something the whole family can both do and enjoy.
Tours, called icewalks by some and canyon crawls by others, take you into Jasper’s Maligne Canyon and Banff’s Johnston and Grotto Canyons, and on a night-trail to Lake Minnewanka’s historic Stewart Canyon Bridge.
