Lake Louise - Ice Dance

There had been an ice carving show on Lake Louise a few weeks prior to the weekend of the ice dance show.  This is a view of the glacier through an ice castle's window.  The ice sculptures are on the lake.

Daniel had been invited to Agi-Day, a large scale agricultural exhibition at the Stampede showground, with Bailey and her Grandfather.  This was far more exciting than joining Aliya, John and myself at Lake Louise for cross-country skiing and an ice dance show.

So how do you put on an ice show on a lake...

First you have to clear the ice and that requires a Zamboni.  Anyone who was intimately connected with the Vancouver winter olympics knows that no other ice rink cleaning machine will do.  The Olympia machine that they used for this event struggled to fill in holes and the skaters had a tough job.  Nonetheless it makes for a lovely photo - just look at that reflection.

And as the last light of the day fell on the spectators who, at this time felt quite warm, the show began.

Spectacular costumes, wonderful music, surreal setting and we were in awe of the drama of it all.

After dusk the lighting engineers came into their own - and being knowledgeable about such things now, owing to Dan's interest in theatre lighting, we appreciated their efforts.  They were standing in the cold for 2 hours without dancing like the skaters! or wrapped in 4 layers of trousers, 5 top layers and a duvet coat like the spectators that Aliya and I are... even John had on all the layers he had brought with him....  And we got chilled...

 Truly fantastic lighting effects... "just gels" Daniel would say.
The lights illuminated the mountains at one point and there was operatic singing which I am sure could have been heard up at the Lake Louise Tea House (if it had been occupied) but it was also a light-hearted show and held us fascinated for the entire time.

The next day:  After skiing the lake the day before we went to the river and tried there.  It was dangerously icy along the banks.  So we then went to the Lake Morraine road which is closed to cars in the winter and given over to groomed cross country ski tracks.  We skied there.  It was great, although we didn't get that far because we kept stopping to admire the views, or the snow formations.  We marvelled at how much we enjoyed it.  Aliya is very stylish on any sort of ski.  Me, I look like an elf on crutches.  Never mind it was a lot of fun and we hope to do more of this next year, all being well.