| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 29/05/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 52 |
| Copyright: Other |
Western Canada: Spring activity breaks
Learn the bear necessities
Matthew Hampton gets active in Alberta
Soft adventure. I can’t say I’ve ever liked the term but it’s what Canada’s west does best:the province of Alberta has more hiking, biking, riding and rafting options than you could shake a ski pole at. And if any of this sounds too strenuous, a spell in the great outdoors watching wildlife and contemplating a scenic walk or two is just as feasible.After a busy week at Canada’s travel industry marketplace Rendezvous, a few days of the latter would have been nice but having heard stories of fresh snow in Banff, I knew it would never be possible. This was my first trip to Alberta – and there was too much to do to think about relaxing.
There isn’t much in the gateway city of Calgary to keep outdoor types happy for long but if you find yourself with time to spare in the city, a visit to the Canada Olympic Park should help you get in the mood for winter sports.
The 1988 Winter Olympics was the biggest thing to hit Calgary since the railway came through in 1883 and was responsible for much of the city’s recent development. For just over £3, you can enjoy the view from the top of the 125-metre ski jump, see the bobsleigh and luge tracks close up and take in the Olympic hall of fame and museum. For £20 per person, you can go a bit further and pretend to be an Olympic hopeful in the road rocket (see box on left) but the park takes up a morning at the most. My appetite whetted, I set off to Banff in the heart of the Rockies to see what Alberta really had to offer.
Just under 2hrs’ drive from Calgary, Banff is set in a national park that costs £4.40 per day per car to enter and provides a good base from which to explore. A good place to start any tour is the Sulphur Mountain Gondola. The summit of this 7,500ft mountain affords spectacular views of the Rockies, accessed by an 8min cable-car ascent, costing £8 for adults and £4 for children.
If you want to go a little higher and have the money, Alpine Helicopters in Canmore, a 20min drive from Banff, offers 30min heli-sightseeing tours from £67 per person.
Helicopter travel is a novelty for most – myself included – especially in an area as spectacular as the Rockies. Although it depends a lot on the weather conditions – our expedition had to be called off on the first attempt – there’s no better way to see so much. And it’s almost impossible to wipe the smile off your face as you wobble off the heli-pad and into the blue – this really is an opportunity not to be missed.
If you think being on firm ground seems tame once you’ve seen it from the sky, think again. A landscape teeming with wildlife should be enough to convince you to take a closer look.
One of the more innovative nature products to have evolved in the region recently is a live and learn project run by the Banff Centre for arts, leadership and mountain culture. The centre runs a variety of arts and management courses but educational holidays are its first stab at conventional tourism. Not that project leader Mike Gibeau would admit that this was conventional.
“Tourists are like Christopher Columbus,” he said. “He didn’t know where he was going when he left Spain, he didn’t know where he was when he found the US and when he got back he had no idea where he’d been.”
This is the attitude his Follow the Great One bear project hopes to dispel, by placing the emphasis on helping to research and conserve the grizzly bear population as opposed to spotting them in the wild. Groups of no more than 10 contribute to the project by collecting hair samples for DNA analysis, tracking bears with radio collars and so on. The four-day break costs £534 staying at the Banff Centre on an all-inclusive basis, though flights are extra. The organisers stress that sightings are rare though and not the focus of the project. If it’s a guaranteed sighting you are after, you might be disappointed. Although the area is one of the best places to see bears, no company can guarantee sightings, as grizzlies – as much as we want to see them – don’t want to see us.
Staying at the Banff Centre has its advantages – particularly for music fans. During our stay, a jazz festival was in full swing and while it was quite far down the modern, challenging jazz route, it made for a change. Actually, the vocal jazz performance Isaw was a bit like listening to two dolphins having a chat with Miles Davis – yet another new experience.
One of Canada’s key strengths is its versatility – and this is most visible during the spring, when it is quite normal to experience all four seasons in one day.
Sunshine Village, the main ski area for Banff, claims to have the best snow in Canada – no mean feat for a start. One thing for sure though, it has the longest season, going right up until May 22. And the pistes don’t close for lack of snow – it’s because the locals get bored of skiing and want to do something else.
The day we skied Sunshine, there had been fresh powder the night before, followed by blue skies for most of the day and a snowstorm in the afternoon – conditions don’t come more variable than this.
Like most North American resorts, the skiable area isn’t as large as France’s Three Valleys or Italy’s Milky Way but it is well linked to its sister resorts of Lake Louise and Mount Norquay. This season, a tri-area pass cost £170 for seven days.
The terrain is varied too – of the 91 runs, about half are suitable for intermediates; the rest is a fairly even split between expert and beginner slopes. What Brits will make of trail names like ‘Cleavage’ or ‘Big Woody’ remains to be seen, but I for one had trouble keeping a straight face.
The only worrying sign here was the presence of T-bar lifts. There may be only two but that’s two too many. Basically a two-man drag lift, this has to be the most irksome form of transport ever devised, relying as it does on you finding a partner of equal size to travel with. This is a small gripe though in the face of what’s on offer here. Other lifts include three high speed quad chairs, one triple, three doubles and the main gondola from the base.
Ski-in, ski-out accommodation is available at the 84-room Sunshine Inn, which can be accessed only by the main gondola, and has a double room lead in of £47 per person per night, though there is a shuttle bus service in Banff which goes to all three resorts in the area.
Accommodation in Banff is varied. For a hotel on the grander end of the scale, the Banff Springs is an obvious choice – but beware, this historic property’s rooms may seem small in comparison to more modern hotels. And they don’t come cheap – a standard double leads in ataround £257 for bed and breakfast in high season. For some, though, the cachet of the name is what matters and the Banff Springs is hard to beat.
Staying in the centre of town, the Banff International offers a competitive lead in of £55 for two sharing but for my money, the best offer was from the Buffalo Mountain Lodge, a short drive from the main street. These beautiful condos, owned and operated by Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts, are set in pine woods and have their own catering facilities, though there is a fine dining restaurant and informal Italian restaurant on site.
The best part of the spring is that this can all be enjoyed at low season prices. The autumn/spring lead in for Bufffalo Mountain is £110, compared with £140 in the summer.
riding the road rocket
Tough guy: our man in Calgary tries the road rocket
Brand new for this summer is the opportunity to ride the road rocket – basically a bobsleigh on wheels – down the same track as theWinter Olympic athletes did in 1988. The vertical drop is 123 metres and the sleighs can get up to 59mph. And at £20 per person for under a minute’s fun, the gradient isn’t the only thing that’s steep.
In a rare moment of pan-journalistic unity, Travel Weekly teamed up with reporters from the UK, New Zealand and Germany and took on the rest of the assembled Rendezvous media delegates.
The ride starts slow but by the time you reach the 360-degree turn near the bottom, you’re going a fair old lick. And after about a minute of knocks and bumps, it’s over – quick but fun.
And how did we do?Er…a disappointing fourth. Out of six. Well, if we’d known they were going to hand out medals, we would have trained harder.
key contacts
Olympic Park:
The Banff Centre:
*earning vacations manager Peter Swain: 001 403 762 6370
Alpine Helicopters:
office manager Karie Russel: 001 403 678 4802
The Banff Springs Hotel:
Buffalo Mountain Lodge:
Alberta: the Rocky Mountains offer tourists fantastic slopes for skiing
resort overview
Accessing the slopes and other attractions is just as easy from either of the two main resorts of Banff and Lake Louise but they are as different from each other as they could be. Make sure you match your clients to the right one with our guide.
Sample product: Inghams offers a two-week lead in of £609 for the Banff Springs, departing Jan 13. The same property leads in at £688 in the spring, based on the last departure of April 6.
A new high-end property, Charlton’s Royal Canadian Lodge, opens on May 27, a superior double costing from £122 per room per night in the high season, to £100 in the low.
Sample product: Crystal offers two weeks at the Château Lake Louise from £619, departing December 2. In April, a 10-day break costs from £569.
the bear facts
Don’t step on the cracks: the bears might just come out and get you. Bear safety is a serious issue here and there’s a lot of bad advice about – climbing a tree won’t save you for a start. A brown bear can chase you up a tree in seconds and a grizzly could probably knock it down. Though it is unlikely you will stumble across a dangerous bear situation, it is vital to know what to do if this happens:
Don’t look now: when confronted, don’t bother trying to run