It’s a bit of an odd site to see vehicles driving back and forth on what looks like a frozen river. This is what you can experience while driving down Highway 1A past Ghost Lake. It’s located just west of the town of Cochrane, Alberta. I tried to coax my husband Jack into driving down the boat access ramp and onto the lake, but he was having none of it. He was convinced we were going to crack through the ice, even though we could see much heavier vehicles on it.
Ice fishing huts dot the lake once it’s frozen. It usually starts to freeze in December and can remain that way until mid-May. The fishermen drive their vehicles across the lake to access the ice shantys.
Ice sailing is another popular activity on the frozen lake. The strong winter winds make it an ideal location. Iceboats are a sailboat like structure that’s built on runners. They can reach speeds of over 100 km’s an hour. Prior to the invent of other modes of transportation they were the fastest way to transport goods over land.
A dad whizzes across the lake on an ATV, pulling his two kids behind him in a plastic sled. The kids seemed to be having a great time, we were happy to see they had helmets on.
Ghost Lake has become rather famous. You may have seen it in television automobile commercials with vehicles driving across the ice. The Mitsubishi company broke five Guinness world records on the lake. Mitsubishi Guinness World Records.
All the dog sledding companies will have wrapped up for the year. There’s definitely no snow around Canmore. In Banff the tubing runs at Mount Norquay are closed now for the season. Sunshine ski hill in Banff is open until May 18th, but I don’t think they have any tubing options. I believe Lake Louise ski hill offers tubing, but they are closing on May 10th. There’s really no other areas of snow I can think of that you could tube on at that time.