Hi friends. On Thursday morning we woke up way before the sun. It was way below freezing out and snow was in the forecast. The three of us got in the car, packed up all our things, and drove out to Lake Louise.
It was an hour long drive and when we arrived, the lake was calm and blue and a dusting of snow was on the boardwalk. The mountains were covered in low clouds but even without seeing the peaks I'd seen in so many photos, it was freakin beautiful.
Even with how meticulously I planned this trip, looking up historical averages and forecasts for every location every day leading up to our departure, I never seriously considered snow. I agonized over buying the right coat for weeks but wound up just packing my light leather jacket. It fits over approximately zero of my sweaters and has generally not proven to be sufficient.
I tried to execute the plan. I tossed off my coat and hat (because do it for the gram #ripvine), stumbled out on the rocks (which were not stable), and tried to coax g out with me. My poor sweet gimpy baby was not a fan of the rocks and refused to join me.
Flying solo, I stood out on the rocks. Dyl took the photo. Literal months of planning, hours and miles of driving, seemingly endless stretches of Montana -- it all led up to this moment. It was incredible. We didn't get the blue sky, we didn't get snow capped mountains. But standing there, just us and the lake, right after the sun came up, for the first snow of the season. It felt like a movie. It was so, so worth it.
Once we got the shot I ran back to the deck to bundle up again and take some photos of Dyl, emulating our boy Jon Snow.
The true king in the north. Never bend the knee.
We stuck around a bit to take some photos for Sylven, chill out with G, and take in the scene as more people started filing in.
The snow started really coming down at this point so, 250 photos later, we decided to call it and head into the hotel for shelter. The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise is, literally, a castle. It's huge and gorgeous and expensive and hard to find everything and very very bougie to normals like us. We explored some of the shops, where Dylan bought two hats and G was treated like a king. We eventually found coffee and sat around and set our fantasy lineups, because priorities.
By this point G was getting pretty pooped after licking up all the snow and sniffing all these new sniffs, so we decided to head back. On our way to Canmore though, we stopped quickly at Lake Moraine while we let G snooze in the car.
Dyl, being a colossal overpacker, lent me his extra winter coat for this one, which was extremely necessary. The snow was really coming down at this point and by the time we got to the lake, it was winter wonderland AF out there. Another really really beautiful sight.
Note: the shore of lake moraine is covered in about ten thousand logs and tree branches. It was NOT EASY to get to that damn rock. There was honestly probably 20 more feet of logs on the ground before that photo.
The snow here made for an incredibly beautiful scene.
After Moraine, we went back to the hotel to chill out, warm up, and relax a little before going out later. We'd left so early it was seriously like 10am by the time we got back. When we went out later we decided to leave G to snooze and go explore Lake Minnewanka, which is the longest lake in the Canadian rockies AND the closest lake to our hotel. It was also v blue.
We got to a point on the trail with a bridge that people were carving stuff into, so Dylan did a very Dylan thing on that.
We hiked around for a few hours trying to find a picturesque spot to hang up the hammock and chill out. The trees around this lake were all super skinny, so we had kind of a tough time, but at the very end on our way back we found a spot that worked for us.
By that point the sun was coming down and it was getting super cold, so we decided to call it. We went back to the hotel, warmed up, and then headed to "downtown" Banff to grab dinner and watch Todd Gurley run up 37 fantasy points on the niners.
It was a good day.