Lake Louise is the original Winter Wonderland

The whole of the Chateau as well as their children and dogs were out skating on the lake today.

All day teams of jingle-belled horses pulled sleighs around and over the lake. You can hear them coming from miles, and they sound exactly like a track from a Christmas sound effects collection. Incongruously, they are driven by cowboys.

No staff accomm for me (I'm a tan M&M)

The place I'm working at is a 'heritage lodge', which is a sort of euphemism for 'no phones, no TVs'. Part of it was built in the 1920s, another wing was added in the 60s and various additions have been made since. Each renovation was made with wildly contrasting construction materials, so that log-cabin runs on to stone runs on to brick runs on to weatherboarding. But it's a pretty little place. Mostly.

Since it's so tiny, Lake Louise employers are required by law to provide accommodation for their staff. As a result most of the village is actually staff accommodation.

The staff here live in a run-down wing at the back, hidden from the view of guests and rumored to be condemned. In a former life this was the 'youth hostel' area of the lodge, but seems to have regressed slightly since it was closed to guests. Passing through the door from the lodge to staff quarters is often like passing into a new climatic zone.

My own room isn't ready yet so I am staying in one of the cheaper guest rooms at the lodge. It's small but cosy and the duvet is a good two feet thick. It is -15 outside and I have no complaints about this whatsoever.

The Majesty of the Rockies, unappreciated

Yesterday I caught the morning Greyhound from Vancouver to Lake Louise for my new job. This took 13 hours. It was a miserable day and although I'm fairly sure we passed through most of the Rockies it was difficult to tell through all the fog and rain.

According to my guidebook the village of Lake Louise is the highest inhabited region in Canada. It was dark long before the bus stopped at the 'mall' of seven or eight shops that is Lake Louise village. The lodge is about 4km up the hill from here, so fortunately someone from the lodge had come down to pick me up.

It's difficult to appreciate the majesty of the Rockies from a Greyhound, but once I was outside even in the darkness I could see the huge, white shapes of the snowy mountains that surround the lodge. The Rockies are distinctive in their stripiness and pointiness - quite unlike NZ mountains and probably something to do with sedimentation. One of them, Mt Fairview, has stripes that run nearly diagonally to the ground and actually makes me slightly dizzy if I look at it too long.



This morning I discovered the lake, which has recently frozen over. It's somehow a lot smaller than I'd imagined it and you can walk to the far end in less than 20 minutes. You can do this either by following the little trail that goes along one side of the lake, or by walking actually ON the lake.

The Chateau - the other and much grander hotel here - has created two smooth snow-free rinks on the lake's surface. One is full of small children whizzing around expertly on hired skates. The other is set up as a hockey rink, and contains unsteady foreigners playing what I'm sure is very, very bad ice hockey. Lots of dogs around also. It seems funny they are so commonplace in a national park, but I suppose there are many fiercer wild animals here, even if they are mostly asleep at the moment.