Suffering a Croatian vacation hangover Chrissy and I hunkered down inside the house early this winter season. It was good to get grounded again but eventually we started going a little crazy. Looking for a relatively inexpensive weekend getaway we decided on Jasper National Park for some cross country skiing.
Leaving straight from work on Friday we arrived at the Lobstick Inn and settled in for an early morning on the trails.
After a big breakfast we grabbed our rented gear from Skis Please (fantastic service), jumped in my 'all terrain car' and headed out to the Athabasca Falls Loop.
The area received about a foot of snow earlier in the week providing a good base on the groomed trails. The Classic cuts pathways were not well defined yet but I think we ended up benefiting from some earlier hardcore skiiers who had recently come before us.
With the snow hanging off the pines we couldn't have asked for a better setting.
Our first time out in 2 years we didn't push ourselves to hard and only went about 7 total kilometers. This left us plenty of time to goof around in the lovely weather.
Calling it a day we hit up some giant nachos at De'd Dog and finished the night with a nightcap and game of crib back at the hotel...we are a wild party!
The next day we got a quick ski in close to town at Whistler's Campground a simple 4.5km loop. While maybe not as picturesque as Athabasca Falls it did have some cool segments like the narrow trail between the campsites.
Feeling more refreshed then tired we decided to treat ourselves to a needed beverage at the Jasper Park Lodge on the way out of town. Chrissy had a hot chocolate and I got a very cool honey lager beer. The honey is actually harvested from the bee hives on the roof of the hotel, shipped to the Big Rock brewery and then specialy brewed only for the Hotel. Besides being an awesome novelty it was a great tasting beer.
Jasper Park Lodge was undergoing renovations but was still decked out in full Christmas decorations. We couldn't help but marvel at their giant gingerbread house with some very impressive stats.
Sad that our weekend was over we were comforted by the fact that Jasper wasn't too far away and we would be back again someday soon.
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