Avalanches
Christmas Eve. Left the town of Golden and headed to Lake Louise, listening to Canada Public Radio along the way. Bill Brycen, author of The Body Book, was talking about how there are 8,000 ways a human can die, and you survive all of them except for one. He also said humans have 650,000 hours to live - it made me think that maybe I was wasting my allocation in that moment, even as I drove through British Columbia to photograph the Canadian Rockies. The road was closed right ahead of me by a man wearing a hard hat and dressed like a construction worker. I thought it was an odd time to being doing construction in the middle of winter until I heard a thunderous BOOM! A huge rush of snow rolled down the mountain about a quarter of a mile in front of me before crossing the road ahead. I realized they were doing avalanche control, which I’ve never seen firsthand before. A helicopter buzzed overhead, surveying the work of the demo crew. Awesome to the max!
Continued on once the road reopened and got a park pass in Lake Louise before doubling back to the town of Field, where I had lunch at the Truffle Pig. The waitress was a cute brunette. She was super new but said she likes it and the job keeps her brain active. Strapped on the snowshoes and hit up Yoho National Park. Made it to the far side of Emerald Lake and hiked through waist deep snow to reach an amazing vista of frozen waterfalls.
The sun went down and I had a longggggg hike through the dark silence back to the lot. I was freaked out they were going to close the gate and lock me in for the night, but when I got back there were still a lot of cars there and the lodge looked open. It was such a relief to see that. Got checked into the Lake Louise Inn. Now this place has an interesting setup - there’s an indoor pool that the rooms all face and have windows to on one side, and on the other side of the pool its bordered by the front desk area and a restaurant above it. My bed and room on the first floor can be peered into from the pool, front desk, and restaurant when the blinds are open. Watched xmas night TV and it was a recap of Wayne Gretzky breaking the NHL scoring record from Gordie Howe. I love Canada. In the next day I’ll head to Calgary, Canada’s version of Denver. It takes its name from a Viking word meaning “cold garden”.