For once it wasn’t me racing, but Alex. The event was the Lake Louise to Banff Loppet, a cross-country ski race which is usually 70km long, and travels the entire distance from Lake Louise to Banff, but this year was shortened to 50km due to flood damage, finishing 20km before Banff.
Alex skied the entire thing solo, while we noble crew cheered him on at the start, then at the exchange points at the end of each of the four legs. It’s a very small-scale event, due to the limitations placed by Parks Canada. There were around 110 people on the course at any time, with a mix of solo skiers and teams.
But first, after waving off the hordes at the start, we spent some time enjoying the Ice Magic Festival at Lake Louise. The Moosling was quite taken by the ice castle, and kept wanting to go back there. He even taste tested it: “Mmmm, tasty ice Mama!”
A few friends from work were doing the race as a team, I caught them finishing up the first leg before Alex skied in.
The weather was wonderful – the middle of January could really bring any kind of weather, so blue skies and temperatures between -10oC and 2oC were pretty much perfect.
Just to make things more difficult, I set an excitable toddler onto Alex just as he was crossing the finish line, narrowly avoiding making him crash.
