Christmas at Canmore, Post 2: Dogsledding

On Wednesday morning (two days before Christmas), we checked online for the current Canmore temperature and decided that all the websites must have been relying on the same thermometer feed, one that was clearly wrong. No way was it minus 30 degrees! It had only been minus 15 up until that day and this didn't feel much colder...

We set off to our morning's appointment at Rafter Six Ranch, a tourist lodge and activity ranch near Exshaw. Ben and I had booked in to go dogsledding at 9:30am, and Megan and Justin had kindly agreed to photograph the start of the proceedings. Upon arriving at Rafter Six after a half hour drive, the cowgirl on duty in the shop/ reception area assured us that it was indeed minus 30 degrees!! On a separate note, we also found out that this girl was one of the 2009 Calgary Stampede Princesses, so she would be in some of our photos from July!

We ended up waiting an hour for our dogsledding guy to arrive with the dogs - he had gotten stuck in a snowdrift while getting the trailer out of his yard! I made use of this hour to get properly acquainted with the Rafter Six pets - three enormous dogs and a longsuffering cat.

**Except for those taken during dogsledding, all photos in this post are Megan's**

Once our dogsledding guide arrived (a British expat whose name we've forgotten), the four of us followed his van and trailer down to the start of the dogsledding path through the woods. Now that we knew it really was minus 30 degrees, we felt a lot colder... ;) Minus 30 is when you can feel your nostril hairs freeze when you breathe, and you instinctively wrinkle your nose to loosen them. It's also the temperature at which taking one's hand out of one's glove to use a camera quickly becomes a painful experience - so thankyou, Megan and Justin, for enduring this for us!!









We were the only ones going dogsledding that morning, and actually the first ones to ever dogsled at Rafter Six Ranch - this was the first season the ranch had teamed up with Mad Dogs Expeditions, and this was the first week that there was enough snow on the trail!

After pulling up at the entrance to the woods, our guide and the lady who was helping him began taking the dogs out of their individual compartments in the trailer. At this point I felt very bad because the dogs seemed extremely reluctant to emerge!! One little fellow, Mad, was really timid and visibly trembling. But thankfully they were all raring to go once it was time to run - and during the run they didn't want to stop either!

The four dogs who pulled our sled were named Ice, Sissy, Mad and ?. They weren't big, white, fluffy dogs like you might imagine -they were small, lean Alaskan Huskies, and different colours to each other due to being cross-bred. We helped put the harnesses on them and attach each harness to the ropes pulling the sled. Ice and Sissy were the lead dogs.



















And... ready, set, go! (We caught Megan off guard with the sudden start, but she still managed to snap these pics...)





Megan and Justin were then able to go back into the lodge and drink hot chocolate and read books for the next 1.5 hours. :)

Not long into the ride, we stopped at a teepee beside the river for some thermos hot chocolate and homemade cookies. (Keen observers may note that at this point the white dog (Ice) at the front got swapped for the black dog whose name we've forgotten... because Ice and Sissy were a little too enthusiastic about being together!!)

















In a nutshell, here's how the rest of our 1.5 hours went: we are both glad we tried dogsledding once, but Ben found it way too exhausting to be particularly enjoyable, and I kept worrying my toes were getting frostbite because they felt so cold and hard!!

Except for a few minutes when we swapped places so Ben could rest, I was the one who got to sit in the sled. Ben and our guide, however, were standing on the runners behind the sled, helping the dogs on flat ground by pushing with their free foot, and helping the dogs up small hills by jumping off the runners and pushing!! Often our [ridiculously fit] guide would run ahead to show the dogs the way through the trees, and then just the two of us were in/on the sled - at times with both of us standing on the runners.

The only time we ran into a tree was when I was steering and Ben was sitting in the sled. :)

And despite the distracting cold and exhaustion, it was absolutely beautiful in the white forest!

Here are the videos I took from the sled (stitched together into one continuous video - yes, we can do that now**), which will do a much better job of setting the scene than my descriptions can...

Here we are on the home straight (Justin had braved the cold again)...



And this is Ben after the ride, with ice in his beard and his fake rabbit fur hat:



Coming soon: hiking to a frozen waterfall...

For more Christmas in Canmore photos, go to the "Our photo albums" section in the sidebar, above right.

**I also just replaced the short video that was in our Girls' Car Racing Night post with a stitched-together compilation of all the videos Ben took that night. Check it out!

Christmas at Canmore, Post 1: Snowboarding at Lake Louise

Tuesday, the first full day of our Canmore holiday, was spent snowboarding at Lake Louise. Megan and I had been intending to try skiing (both for the first time) because we have issues with getting off chairlifts on our snowboards (and apparently it's much easier on skis), but it turned out there was a gondola at Lake Louise, so we decided to snowboard instead.

Riding a gondola means that skis and boards are placed in boxes on the outside of the capsule and retrieved upon exiting at the top of the ride, thus avoiding the awkwardness and terror involved in sliding off a still-moving chairlift seat with only one foot strapped to a snowboard and trying to avoid the other three people disembarking at the same moment. (Click here to read the blog entry from the day this phobia developed - I didn't end up going snowboarding again last winter because my knee continued to twinge for some months and still occasionally does so!)

We were all quite happy with the grouping afforded by the skill, confidence and energy levels present in our 4-person group. In other words, Ben and Justin spent the day snowboarding from the top to the bottom of the gondola about 10 or 12 times, whereas Megan and I only boarded down 3 times. :) It was great to have company and yet not have to worry about holding the boys back (or being constantly instructed by them to do things that result in lots of falling over, bruises and grumpiness)!

Here's a building we stopped at for a rest - it had delicious chocolatey smells issuing from it but there wasn't a soul in sight! How awesome are these icicles!!

**All photos in this post are Megan's**

In between each of our runs, we had a nice rest in the cafeteria area. We met the boys for lunch after our first run, and discovered that what they say of Whistler is also true of Lake Louise - the place seems to be entirely staffed by young Aussies (and a few Kiwis)!! I've never felt so patriotic while ordering lunch in a foreign country before. All four of my servers were Australian and we shared a sympathetic whinge about how this country does not know about putting chicken salt on chips!

Here are Megan and I sitting in an ice sculpture of a bobsled - the sculpture was advertising the upcoming International Ice Sculpting Competition at Lake Louise!



And at the end of the day, here are four tired but happy and uninjured snowboarders, about to brush the snow off the car and drive home to some delicious pasta prepared by Megan and Justin...

Two nights in Edmonton

On Saturday 19th December, we drove to Edmonton, Alberta, to spend two nights with Megan and Justin - their last two nights in the home exchange house they had been living in since July.


(Megan's photo)

We had been planning our Christmas with them for a couple of months - five nights in Canmore (near Banff, in the Rocky Mountains) - so we went via Edmonton to (a) extend the fun, and (b) help with the logistics since they would have lots of luggage and no vehicle. They were flying back to NZ and on to visit Australia two days after Christmas.

We saw lots of beautiful snow-covered pine trees and mountains on the 11 hour drive to Edmonton. You'll see MANY more photos of such things in the upcoming blog entries, but here are a few pics from the drive...







On Sunday, the four of us drove a couple of hours to Rimbey, AB, for special meetings. We were missing ours in Vancouver on the same day, so it was wonderful we could make it to Rimbey!

Back in Edmonton that night, we had Mucho Burritos for tea (M&J's last meal of their favourite takeaway) and then drove around to look at Christmas lights. There's a street that calls itself "Candy Cane Lane", with about 200 houses decorated in Christmas lights and lawn ornaments, and people drive slowly, walk, or hop aboard a horse and cart to see them all. We chose the "drive slowly" option since it was about minus 15 degrees Celsius!

Here are some duelling snowmen that were on one of the front lawns...


(Megan's photo)

After Candy Cane Lane, we drove to Maisie's Magical Christmas House, where we did get out and walk around. Maisie was a lady who decorated her house in an unbelievable array of lights and Christmas decorations each year, and it became a bit of a local attraction. After she passed away a few years ago, her family have continued the tradition.







Despite us being rugged up like this and still cold at -15 degrees, at Maisie's house we actually saw a guy in his 20s who was only wearing a t-shirt (well, and jeans)!!!



More photos at Maisie's...




















(Megan's photo)

The next day, Monday, Megan and Justin finished packing up and cleaning their house, and around lunchtime we set off for Canmore - our winter wonderland!

To be continued...