Day 15 - Lake Louise to Vancouver

26 December 2025 - Boxing Day

 

We were up and out of Lake Louise nice and early this morning. Although it wasn't snowing it was clear that it had been most of the night. The road was covered in snow, but fortunately the traffic was pretty light right the way through to Calgary. A light fog covered Calgary as we drove closer to the city, but by the time we checked in, 2hrs ahead of our flight, this had transitioned to snowing. Very quickly we were seeing some industrial sized snow ploughs run across the runway's. 

It was around this time we started to wonder what level of snow would meet criteria for a flight cancellation. The snow appeared to be getting heavier. While we did hear of a cancelled flight to Toronto (who were in the middle of a severe polar blast), other flights were proceeding. Apparently, the heavy snow we were experiencing was not sufficient as we were good to go and ready to board. I think we spent more time on the tarmac than what we did in the air. This time we were doubly sprayed with anti-freeze, a pink layer followed by a lime green layer. The pilot made the promise of turbulence, but actually it was a pretty smooth flight.

Vancouver was slightly cloudy, grey, crisp, but not freezing. By the time we landed it was late afternoon so a quick bite to eat and then we spent the evening waiting for my sister Ann-Maree and her three children, Alexandria, Ewan and Eryn to join us. 

Ann-Maree and the kids had left Perth Christmas morning on the same early morning flights we had departed on. They should have been in Vancouver a day prior to us. Unfortunately, they were delayed due to the need to disembark a sick passenger and clean the plane. This set off a cascade of events across their entire journey. Qantas made the decision that they would not arrive in Melbourne in time to meet their flight to LAX so decided to reroute them to Sydney, only they failed to tell them. As they stood waiting to board their flight to LAX they had a phone call telling them they had 2 minutes and a final call to get back to the domestic airport for their flight to Sydney, which they would never make. They literally watched their Fiji Airways flight board and depart. Meanwhile Qantas made arrangements for them to fly to LAX via Honolulu.  This might not seem like the worst thing in the world until you realise this means you are not going to make your flight from LAX to Vancouver. 

Some how we managed to change this flight on their behalf by guessing the email they were using. Unfortunately LAX is a massive airport, and while they did make this flight with an hour to spare, the check-in had closed and there was no-one to be seen at the check-in desk. We managed to change their flights again (this time using a DOB) for them for the following day and these four exhausted travellers spent the night in LAX. They finally arrived to meet us, 24hrs later than expected and following 58hrs in transit around 11pm on the same day we arrived. 

We surprised them by waiting in the lobby with an excited and relieved reunion.  We expected to be tucking them into bed, but there was much debriefing and story telling to be had.