<font color=blue>after Jasper and Banff ... the skiing sucks!</font color=blue>
I dunno, Wingnut -- I've had only one opportunity to ski Banff, and I decided to let it slide.
A couple of us were sent on a business trip to Calgary during the winter. We spent most of our time in the basement of a telephone company central office, testing out our computerized phone testing equipment. We were scheduled to stay there a week, but our plan was to sneak off to Banff for a couple of days of world class downhilling (
we weren't world class -- the
snow was).
As it turned out, there was a cold snap that week. Now, I'm from Californy, so cold is anything below 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but this was
minus 40!!! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif The TV stations were broadcasting warnings that skiers should wear the appropriate clothing 'cuz with the windchill, the mountain temperature was something like zero degrees Kelvin. Okay, maybe not quite, but close enough for me. /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif They showed video of what they called "low temperature skiers".
YIKES! These guys were dressed like astronauts! No contact whatsoever with the outside air, and self-contained breathing gear!
So, like I said, we decided to skip Banff that trip. On the day before we left for home, somebody came downstairs and said, "Come see the Chinook, eh?" I had seen Chinooks before (made by Toyota, weren't they?), so I didn't understand the big deal. I have to admit, though, when I looked up at the sky and saw that someone had drawn a huge arc from horizon to horizon, seperating black from white, I was near awestruck! As it eventually passed over us, the temp went from minus 40 to plus 40 F. Never saw anything like that in my life.
Of course there was a great deal of snow melt all of a sudden, and then the sun went down, re-freezing everything. That's the first time I discovered the joys of black ice.
But that's another story. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif
