I’m back from the Lake Louise to Banff loppet where conditions were as good as I’ve ever seen them with excellent snow coverage, great tracks, and my team broke the five hour barrier for the first time ever.
My teammate Joelle at the finish of leg one in Baker creek
The weather was also as favourable as possible with cold snow, making waxing easy, and beautiful sunshine as daylight broke in the spectacular rocky mountains. On leg 2, the sun was rising and shining directly into my eyes and blinding me, that’s my excuse for being so slow. The air temperature at the start was -12°C, and at the finish line in Banff, depending on the time of day, was around -6°C.
Mother and daughter, Linda and Joelle waiting for their teammates to arrive at Johnston Canyon
Congratulations to Ian Daffern who was the overall and individual winner with a time of 4:09. That’s only 2 minutes short of the all-time record set by John Groeneveld in 2000. An amazing feat when you consider some of the difficult trails which we must ski through.
My teammate Peter crosses the finish line in Banff
I’ll post more photos later. In the mean time, if anyone would like to share their loppet experience, and let all the readers know how much fun you had, please leave a comment or an email bobtruman@shaw.ca and I’ll be happy to post the account of your adventure, or misadventure as the case may be. It’s always enlightening to hear the details from those with boots skis on the ground. Luckily, this year, we didn’t have much “ground” to worry about, only a few pine needles and ice. I used my good skis for both legs and only ended up with minor scratches. I do know of two skiers who lost pole baskets.
Photos from the loppet(note there are two pages of photos)
What an awesome day. I had a lot of fun. Truly an adventure ski!
Coming from Sherwood Park I was shocked at the amount of flat double-pole sections. I get more climbing around here!
Ah well, I have to confess…we skied as a 4 person team representing Lifesport and as God is my witness I thought we were all over 40…Ian Daffern, the overall winner(and over 40) did our leg one and I did my usual 2 and 3 ( i am 65) and my wife Kat did 4 and 5 (she is, ah “over 40”) But we had asked Milaine Theriault, who had not raced in 4 years, to do the last leg. FULL DISCLOSURE: she is a Lifesport affiliate and has had a few Olympic experiences…
THEN I found out Milaine is not yet 40, but 39!?! So the punch line is we were beat by Alaric and Caroline in the mixed 40 and over, BUT sort of ‘cheated’ our way-inadvertantly- into second place and would have won the under 40, I think.
I am a bad team captain!
Although I haven’t read the rules for a while, I remember them saying that members of a Mixed 40+ team could be under 40, but the entire team required an average age of 40 or more. If not, then my team is really in trouble with a 16-year-old. Peter and I were joking before registration, while looking for a third team member, that with each of us being 59, we only needed a 2-year-old. -Bob
“…while looking for a third team member, that with each of us being 59, we only needed a 2-year-old.”
I can see your wheels churning for next year -)
Congratulations to everyone. I envy you all in that beautiful spot and also embodying the meaning of enjoyment of the outdoors and staying fit.
It’s OK Jon, like Bob said, it’s average age of the team on race day. Now you just have to apologize to Milaine 🙂
Hello Bob, nice seeing you yesterday at the loppet. Yesterday I mentioned our team had made major improvements in our time. I appears that we shaved over an hour off of last year. I will send a more complete report once we see the final times.