Flying out of Vancouver you get the most incredible view of the city and its stunning coastal geography laid out beneath you. The nearby snow-capped North Shore Mountains – Grouse, Cypress, Seymour and the iconic formation of The Lions (twin mountains called The Sisters by the native Squamish people), whilst further ahead lie the vast Coast Mountains, the volcanic Cascades and beyond, the skiing paradise of Whistler.

Our destination, the mighty Rocky Mountains and the frozen prairie city of Calgary that sits at the foothills of the Rockies, just 127k east from Banff. The view of the mountains from the plane is breathtaking on a crystal-clear winter’s day – rugged snowy peaks and glacial icefields that seemingly go on forever to the horizon. But, as we make our descent into Calgary, the Rockies abruptly end, giving way to the vast frozen dry Canadian Prairies which encompass the huge provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, covering some 2 million square kilometres. Calgary itself has a population of some 1.7 million, so a not insignificant city, with a booming energy industry including oil, gas and renewables, but also a leading North American tech hub. And home in summer to the famous Stampede.

The city itself is a cluster of high-rise sky scrapers that seem even taller against the flat prairie landscape, but it’s the white out from the almost constant snow and ice that defines this city in winter. On the day – the last of our Rockies adventure – we went into town there was a blizzard raging, so the visibility was minimal and the temperature -12 with a wind chill of -20. Bone chillingly (but thrillingly) cold! And, needless to say (it was a weekend), Downtown felt empty, as if we’d walked onto the set of ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ – the film that depicts catastrophic climatic effects following the disruption of the North Atlantic Ocean Circulation and the dawning of a new Ice Age… Calgary is known for its bitterly cold winters, so no surprises here. At least we were prepared and rugged up! 

Previously, we’d been up in the Banff region of the Rockies (as per my last post) and as a last stop, (before a brief stroll and outdoor lunch complete with brazier and blankets in Banff itself) we’d spent a morning at the stunning beautiful Lake Minnewanka (yes, I know). It’s a glacial lake just north of Banff and surprisingly, unfrozen – probably due to its size and depth, 21 kilometres long and 142 metres deep. It has a deep dark icy green appearance with snow drifting across the surface and an eerie silence that creeps down from the dense forest that hugs the shoreline.  

The local First Nations peoples, the Stoney Nakoda, called this place ‘Minn-waki’ or ‘Lake of the Spirits’, and you can sense why. The brooding rugged mountains tower over the lake, cascading almost vertically down to the water with the forest stirring with wild life including Mule Deer (spotted on the road towards the lake), Bears, Wolves and Wolverines (thankfully not seen). It’s a wild eerie place. And for good reason, below the surface lies a whole abandoned resort town from the early 20^th Century – now lost forever in the icy depths following the building of the nearby dam.