I think I'm about finished with the Back Street Banff gallery. There may be the odd picture to come, but I think I've got most of it. To get your bearings, try this Google Map of the area.

Update: It has been noted that there are very few people in these pictures. Well, that's because there were no people there when I took them. I didn't wait for people to move out of the way - it's just like this most of the time!

Since I'd caned it so much for the last couple of days, I decided to have a 'cruisy' day at Norquay today. The bus to Norquay goes at about 9am or 11.30 - not a great choice, but since I was slacking off, 11.30 was just fine.

I've actually had a very suprising day. Norquay's generally derided as having rubbish snow and boring terrain. Actually, Norquay's got some good terrain, although it's true a lot of their snow gets hard packed and is difficult to ski on. It's also true that because they have to groom everything all the time, the slopes get a bit homogonised.

However, Norquay's a great place for the intermediate skier (beginners: I'd suggest Lake Louise, although they do have some fairly good places to learn at Norquay). For the intermediate skier, hard pack forces good carving technique, as that's the only way to get an edge. Also, a good deal of the bumpy terrain in Norquay is good for learning how to do bumps. Whilst they do get a bit hard from time to time, a lot of them aren't on very steep gradients, so quite a good place to try out a few moves. There's no danger of getting cut-up by some lice infested snowboarder either, because they're all at one of the other mountains.

For the more advanced skier, well, here's where Norquay suprised me the most. The two person Norquay Lift services nothing but advanced terrain. The marked runs are a bit boring, but get over to the edge of the ski area, and even two days after snow, I found some fresh powder (not much of course, but it was there!). The views over the valley and Banff are incredible and there's some excellent terrain and long runs (not overly steep, but quite technical).

Norquay's apparently under new management. There's some concern that they won't be able to make the money they need in Summer to stay open in Winter. I don't know about that, but Norquay seems to want to attract the locals and their families and build something of a community hill. This strikes me as a great idea - my experience today was the least commercialised, least pressured I've had in a while. There are no queues at Sunshine because they're very good at herding people. There are no queues at Norquay because there are no people! That said, almost all that I spoke to were Canadian, which makes a change from meeting yet more tourists like myself!

Norquay also seems to have the best food of any mountain in Banff. That's not saying a lot, as Sunshine and Louise thrive on tasteless burgers/hot dogs and badly cooked fries/chips. Norquay on the other hand has quite possibly the nicest lodge of the lot, and serves alternatives such as pasta, lasagne, pizza and a few other things. You can also get a good smoothie or coffee in the cafe upstairs. Whilst all this might be available in the restaurants elsewhere, it's all in the 'cafeteria' style bit of the lodge at Norquay.

Norquay's first lift is just 15-20 minutes out of Banff. If you fancy a day with a slightly slower pace of life, a bit more community and less commercialism, give it a try.

(There'd be more photos, but after Spring style skiing in the morning, it started to snow in the afternoon so the light wasn't very good!).

I finally got to Kicking Horse Mountain yesterday. I've been there before and remember it being pretty extreme. Back then, they'd just acquired Fuez Bowl, so I expected that by now there'd be lifts all over it - nope! Fuez bowl is still just incredible steeps, and oodles of fluffy powder.

I arrived the day after a big dump. The day before had been really windy, so a lot of the mountain was shut (apparently skis and boards had been falling off the gondola, so things were pretty bad!). That left all that powder mostly untracked... Word had got out, so the bus from Banff was completely full (most of the time, they struggle to even get 10 people which is the minimum required to run the bus!). Kicking Horse mountain was "busy", in so much as there was a few minutes wait at the gondola, and a few more minutes at the Stairway to Heaven lift (which normally never sees queues - also, it's home to a little food place, where they do things that aren't burgers and fries - well worth a visit).

Fuez bowl was incredible. There was quite a bit of powder around, although you had to track around to get completely fresh. I did, and got this picture. I just stuck my pole in the snow next to me, and here's how far down it went! Great stuff.

I also got a picture of CPR Ridge from across the bowl. Remember, this is a busy day! (although to be fair in the morning it had had people all over the place, but by the time I took this, it was, well, empty!).

As is the way at Kicking Horse, I covered a lot of ground and skied some of the steepest terrain I've ever been on. Delerium Dive hasn't got a patch on some of this! I went home physically exhausted - the sign of a good day out ;-)

PS. It's the same sort of deal as it used to be to get to Kicking Horse from Banff, but nowadays, Discover Banff Tours do the tickets instead of Rude Girls.

I haven't been very prolific with my camera since I've been in Canada. Mostly the weather's not really been that bright, or I haven't had my camera on me (typical!).

Anyway, here's a nice one of an angel, carved by a liftie at the top of the Angel Express in Sunshine Village. There's also this other one looking down one of the "legendary steeps" at Lake Louise. On this occasion, the Fall Line Chutes, like the rest of Louise were covered in about 17cm of fresh snow. The picture doesn't show how steep it really is, but if you look carefully, you can see the Temple Lodge at the bottom of the valley.

I've decided that there are already plenty of pictures around Banff town. Instead, I'm going to do a series of pictures of "back street Banff", taking in the glorious sites of every back street, back alley and service entrance I can find. More on that in a bit though...

Some miscreant is currently making a concerted attempt at spamming The Cat. His 'bot net doesn't seem too big (maybe 20 odd machines?). The thing is, each machine blats about 5 spams at Coofer Cat, then does nothing for ages before having another go. All in all, The Cat's taking quite a pounding from this spam (which I'd put down to a single spammer, given the style of the attack).

Thankfully, the excellent Spam Module for Drupal is doing a fantastic job of keeping the spam off the site, and The Cat is fit enough to handle the (much, much) higher traffic.

It just makes me wonder if this bottom-feeder is actually getting anything from someone for supposedly raising the search profile of these various drugs and gambling pages. The thing that grates with all this, is (a) it's not working, and (b) even if it was, having hundreds and hundreds of links from each page is counter-productive: all the major search engines defend against that sort of thing. If someone is paying for this, they're not even getting a vaguely good service!

Update 17th Feb: Spoke too soon, the system's load average went sky high, but a few restarts sorted it out. Still not much getting through the spam filter though ;-)

Before we had much in the way of new snow, I'd been trying to perfect my carving technique. I was doing okay, but a bit annoyed because I hadn't got it quite right.

Then new snow came. "To hell with the technique", I thought, "get in there and enjoy it". And so it came to pass that I played in oodles of fresh snow, and miraculously, the Great Lord Steepness bestowed upon me a correction of my technique such that I have survived another dose of Hell's Kitchen without mishap.

I need an avalanche beacon and then I'll be on The Dive ;-)

We've had yet more new snow. It's been sort of 'on and off' snowing for a few days, but Lake Louise had about 5cm of new snow over night. As if that weren't enough, my newly serviced skis feel like a whole new experience. Whilst my carving isn't as good as it should be, I can actually stick on hard-pack (of which there's sadly still quite a bit).

I just can't get enough of the mountains. I like it cold too, but -15C is getting to me a bit! (High calorie hot chocolate seems to stave off most things though!)

Sunshine had 2cm of snow last night, and a little more forecast tonight, but there's a big thaw going on in town. It's all going to be fine though, I'm sure!

Click for bigger picture, and downloadable PDFMy first two days skiing have been a blast. I don't know if it's familiarity with Banff (particularly Sunshine Village), or if it's Barbie Power, but I've been skiing really well (and really far/fast too).

Of course, now it's day 3, I'm knackered, but it's been really good fun getting here. Tomorrow, I'm all set to kick mountain arse all over again. It's a bit cloudy, so I'm hoping for new snow too... Beat that, Europe ;-)

Click the picture for a bigger verison of a comic strip summation of my first two days or so (there's even a downloadable PDF if that's what turns you on).