Tuesday, 23 September 2008

BANFF, MOSQUITO CREEK AND WHISTLER

So after seeing a lot of nothing along the Prairies and after 2 pretty crappy nights sleep on the Greyhound we arrived in Banff. The Rockies are beautiful and we stayed in a place called Alpine Lodge that was really nice. Our first port of call in Banff was the town to buy some clothes that would keep us warm cause our summer gear wasn't up to the job!! Once kitted out with hat, gloves and more layers we walked round the town. That evening we met our room mates a couple of blokes from France (can't have everything!!!!) and went to the bar with them and got lashed!! Next day we decided we would take on a mountain, so we chose the smallest in our fragile state and it was called Tunnel Mountain and was 1000ft, took us an hour to get up and was amazing views of the town from the summit. In the afternoon we decided to do another trail called the Bow river to Hoodoos, it was a very scenic route with water falls and mountains eveywhere, it took us about 3 hours, and by the time we got back to the hostel we were knackered!!! Next day we were feeling adventurous so we took on Sulphur mountain, this was a 2300ft mission. It took us 2 hours to get to the summit where we were greeted with a load of lazy people who took the gondola up. We had lunch and ended up sharing most of it with a chipmunk we named fatty for obvious reasons!!!! We walked back down and at the bottom someone informed us that if you hike up, you can get the gondalo for free coming back down, cheers too little too late by then!!!! So we treated ourselves after our hard work to a hot springs sesh, it was 39 degrees and exactly what my body wanted!! Our last day in Banff and we just did a tame trail called the Fenland Trail, then it was back on the bus to Lake Louise to go to the not so civilised Mosquito Creek!!



After eventually managing to get someone to drop us off in the middle of nowhere on Highway 93, we found our new digs for the next 2 nights!! This place has no electricity, no running water and in the middle of nowhere so no signal on your phones, it was proper in the wilderness!!!!! We met Nick our bloke who ran it, you can tell he doesn't get to speak to many people cause we were talked at for hours it felt!! Me and Leanne were cold so thought that we could make a fire on the wood burning fireplace no problem, oh my god about an hour later we had the most pathetic little flame ever, so Nick had to teach us the right way, thought my militray days may have come in use but oh no!!!!! That night a group of Belgium blokes pitched up and we had beers with them until they decided to try and get the sauna working, it took them hours!! Next day we went for a hike on a trail across the highway, we didn't see much life and we crossed the creek and it was freezing, so no way was I going to bathe in that!! Then we checked out a load of waterfalls and headed back to our humble abode. Next day we did some wood chopping, and got a lift back to Lake Louise where we picked up our next greyhound for Whistler, another epic journey ahead of us!!

We arrived at Whistler early in the morning and felt like dog poo, so we immediately got to the hostel and got our heads down. We checked out the town that was a 3 mile walk from our digs cause we stayed in the creek not the village, very pretty little place. The next day we were feeling adveturous again and thought we would take on Mount Whistler and the tourist information guide bloke looked at us as if we were dreamers!! So we took it on and after about an hour and a half of almost scrambling up a mountain we gave up and came back down and managed to drink 2 litres of cranberry cider each with our tea!! The next morning was ropey to say the least, my head was pounding and again vowed I'd never touch another drop of Satans drop!! We got our sorry asses out of bed in the PM and went for a tame walk around one of the trails for a few hours. So we had an early night again to prepare ourselves for the last Greyhound leg in Canada to Vancouver..........................

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