Snowshoeing in Banff

A bunch of my friends and I went snowshoeing in Banff on Saturday. We hiked the Bourgeau Lake Trail, which travels 15km roundtrip and climbs 700m to Bourgeau Lake, which is nestled between peaks in a mountain meadow. At this time of year, we expected snow at the top, so we rented snowshoes for our trip.

We started our hike completely bundled up against the weather. Fleece and outer shell jackets, scarf, toque, gloves and more, however within minutes we realized it wasn't that cold and we were quite warm due to our efforts hiking the trail. We shucked some layers and continued on:There was very little snow at the trailhead, but by the halfway point at this bridge, there was a respectable amount of it on the ground:Since we were hiking in forest much of the ascent, and due to the fact that clouds obscured our view, we didn't see much in the way of scenic views. We did pass a neat frozen waterfall just before the most intense climb to the meadow:Here are Bonnie, Deanna, Joelle and Bindi (left to right). Please notice Bonnie's awesome purple snowpants combined with red gators - mmm, colour-coordination!The next part of our climb was quite arduous, and we finally hit enough snow to strap on our snowshoes. It took a few minutes to get used to them, but I quickly realized how FUN snowshoes are! We reached the meadow at the top of our climb to this view:In addition to the view, we also achieved the windiest and snowiest part of the hike. As we rounded the corner into the meadow, the strong wind blew the snow into our faces. All we wanted was to stop and eat lunch, so we quickly found shelter behind some trees and ate our food. This is me, after we'd eaten and as I started throwing snowballs:My snow angel:Kim and Bonnie at the lunch site:After lunch we continued on a few hundred meters through the meadow to the lake.It's a little hard to tell, but yes, it IS a lake. Bourgeau Lake, in fact. Although it looks completely frozen in the picture, it actually wasn't.
Here's Garrett at the lakeside:Now that we were in a nice clear, flat area, we decided to commence our snowshoe race event! Bonnie and I started our race in a flurry of snow and laughing. Here are some of the pictures:I won that race, but just by a bit.
Bindi relaxed and laughed while we tired ourselves out in our races:Next, Deanna and Joelle raced, finding Joelle victorious (pictures not shown!).
We finished up the event with a showdown between Joelle and I. I took the lead after a few seconds, and was going to win except Joelle threw herself over the line at the last second. Here is the photo-finish picture:Joelle's hand looks to be ahead of mine, however the rock in the background isn't the rock we were using as the finish line, so I'm not really sure who won. I'd have to give Joelle some serious credit for throwing herself bodily over the line! We both fell down laughing after our race:Next it was time to return back down to the car. With the snow and clouds, it started to get darker out very early and the snow was coming down pretty hard as we descended. We were able to wear our snowshoes longer on the way down then on the way up because so much snow had fallen since our ascent!With a few breaks on the way down, we made good time back to the car. We removed our wet gear, hopped into a warm car and picked up a hot coffee - the perfect end to a fun day of snowshoeing.