Lake Louise

Lake Louise is the most picturesque of the fields so far and this is clear right from arrival. The main lodge facility is all fully made of a light wood, an impressive and welcoming sight that epitomises what you would expect from a Rocky Mountain resort. When we first got to the field it had by then been a few days since the field had got any fresh snow, and after the clear runs of Sunshine Village Lake Louise was looking a little bit rougher. Lake Louise has a main front face, a back face of the same mountain and then further lifts going up the Larch face behind. Being overly optimistic we headed up and over the front face, and off down a back face black diamond that end up in a tight path through the trees dodging roots. We finally managed to get to the end of that track with the lift in sight, though separated from us by a filthy mogul track. Quite an introduction to the field, though I’ll have to take the blame for that one.

We spent most of the first day on the Larch hill, which by virtue of being further to get to had the best condition runs. The second day we were there we spent more time on the front face, and split the third day between the two (the back face of the main mountain was really only good for access). 

Despite having more snow than Ruapehu normally gets, while we were there you couldn’t shake the feeling that the field needed another 30cms or so to really blow you away. The runs through the trees were great and you could get some really long runs going, but unlike Sunshine you needed to be on your guard for rocks coming through. We also got a little unlucky on the second day in that the wind came up at the same time as the snow started coming down, whipping away our fresh powder as soon as it came down.

As you may know, Kathryn and I got engaged at the Marmot Basin field, which is in a later blog post. While that was very successful, an earlier attempt at Lake Louise was an epic failure. The goal was to write the proposal in the snow for her to see, but because we were boarding together without someone else to write it I had to come up with an elaborate story to set it up. Having finally gotten Kathryn to sit above me out of view and planning to come at me a certain way (“for a film shot”) I got started on the writing. Unfortunately, at just the wrong time the wind came up and knocked my board off its perch and it was gone down the hill. I had to immediately abandon the message and chase the board, and hope that once Kathryn came down she wouldn’t see it.  Luckily for me this worked out in that she didn’t see it, but we still lost an hour trying to find the board, which we eventually found when Kathryn spotted the bindings in some deep powder. Luckily the board didn’t get anywhere near injuring anyone but it just wasn’t meant to be that day. Good things take time!