Banff is beautiful. I can totally understand why it has the reputation it has.
It was really nice out today, and we were surrounded by all these big, awesome mountains, so we thought it would a good day for a hike. We ended up climbing Sulphur Mountain – 3.5 miles, straight up via switchbacks. Relentlessly. With no breaks. Oh, and don’t forget the snow on the trail once we got up that high.
We decided to rest a bit at about 2.5 miles, and were sitting peacefully under a spruce tree having a bite to eat. Which is when we got attacked by another bird, this one a Clark’s Nutcracker. It swooped in from nowhere and actually tried to grab the sandwich out of Jon’s hand as he was about to take a bite. Which was bad enough but the damn bird tried twice more. I seriously thought Jon was going to fall off the mountain trying to kill the thing. Apparently we should never stop for lunch anywhere outside because the birds really are out to get us.
We did, however, finally make it to the summit at 7420 feet, and were treated to 360° views of the mountains:
We did take the gondola down, which Jon did NOT enjoy at all. Oddly, it didn’t bother me anywhere near as much as that stupid suspension bridge. Beautiful views all the way down:
We took one more pic looking back up at the mountain – we were at the top, just where you can see the house (it’s actually the top of the gondola):
After fueling up with some caffeine, we decided to head out to Lake Louise, since it would have been a shame to drive all this way and not see it.
The scenery was gorgeous but somewhat ruined by the large numbers of really stupid tourists. I mean, if you are standing in front of a frozen glacial lake, with a big glacier staring at you, and there’s a sign saying ‘Danger, Thin Ice’, why on earth would you think it’s a good idea to walk on it?
We are definitely in agreement this is a place we would love to come back to someday.