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Published: February 23rd 2009
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Well we have been in Fernie for 6 weeks now and we are loving it. The snow still hasn't arrived and we have kinda given up on that one. It's always coming next week. It may happen but I fear not until before we depart. We are well into planning the next stage of our trip and have a departure date for Fernie which is 12th March. We fly to Vancouver and then drive down to Moab with Kyle for 5 days mountain biking, then we are exploring the parks on the way for a couple of nights in Vegas. After that we drive to Seattle via Death Valley, Yosemite, San Fran and Lake Tahoe before spending 10 days in Vancouver with Kyle and exploring the area.
After being here a few weeks and 'finding her balls' Debs started riding like a champ and now rips it up on the slopes. She took me down a double black diamond then off piste the other day saying she didn't want to go down the mellow stuff as it wasn't exciting enough. She is also becoming somewhat of a powder hound seeking it out when ever it arrives and reveling in the few
cm's of fresh that we get from time to time. She has also demonstrated (see pic) that wrist guards are a good idea when she sat down awkwardly and broke her wrist guard thankfully no damage to the wrist at all. But either way she is now ripping better than anyone (apart from Pete) whom I normally ride with ;-) You know who you are 😉 And is keen to show off her skills in Wanaka with Ailsa, Ryan and the rest of the Whanau.
We have also been settling into north American lifestyle.. eating too much fast food (Despite skiing 6 days a week I'm still gaining weight!) drinking a few a beers and getting excited by big trucks.. (you can buy a monster Ford F150 here for around 20k canadian.. it's ridiculous how big these things are and how jacked up..) but they look cool and I want one.. I just have to work out how to pay the fuel bill and how to ship it to NZ.. We also had a good afternoon watching 'Superbowl Sunday' eating wings and drinking Coors.. I sat next to a guy who explained to me the chess like strategy of what
goes on (at least it explains all the pauses that causes a 60 minute game to last 4 hours), but it did create a new appreciation for the game.. I still contend that they are pansy's compared to our Rugby boys.. Pads... bah..
After seeing tracks all over the place as I'm riding I managed to get a photo of a herd of deer on the piste.. pretty funny thing to see as they didn't seem that bothered by the snow mobiles trying to herd them off.. Other people have seen moose out by the haul back T-bar we are waiting for the unseasonably warm weather to wake up the Grizzlies!
A few of my old colleagues came to Banff for a week and given they were so close we had to go and visit them, which meant "ROAD TRIP!" So we hired a car from Fernie 'Rent a wreck'.. (typical small town outfit charged us as much as a car is for 2 weeks from Vegas for 4 days) and drove up to Banff on Thursday night. We wanted to get a full day on Friday so we went up on the Thursday night rather than Friday morning. It
was a pretty interesting trip as we set out on a 5 hour drive with only 2 hour's of daylight left. So we found ourselves driving over the Kootney mountain pass in a 2 wheel drive rental car that had headlights that didn't go that far on completely unmarked snow covered roads.. it was quite a stressful drive. Someone should tell Canadians about cats eye's and reflective markers so that you can tell where the road is! But we made it through to visit Alex, Farah and Sabeer in the Banff Gateway. It was great to see a new area but the first day skiing at Lake Louise was disappointing with Louise having less snow than Fernie!! Icy crappy lumpy hard pack.. but at least they had a park!.. (The one really disappointing thing about Fernie is the lack of a snow park.. damn north American liability laws).
But the road trip luck came through for us when that night it started dumping! Driving back from Banff to Alex's chalet, normally a 10 minute drive too over an hour as a foot of snow was dumped on the highway. It was a amusing drive back as we passed several large
4x4's traveling cross country or attempting to! Another drive where it was hard to work out where the road was! But fortunately I wasn't driving and we were in a big 4x4 instead of a little 2 wheel drive.
We had a great morning the next day at Sunshine resort, (they had a massive park!) They also have a place where you can ski in Alberta one turn and British Columbia the next turn so needless to say we indulged in a little border crossing! (sorry bad pun).
After a great 2 days with the crew we had the final meal. Alex wanted to BBQ in the snow and we almost did but the puking snow defeated us.. But 10 out of 10 for effort!. A great time with this crew.
The final thing that's interesting is my recent 31st. Those of you with me at my 21st will remember we had some great powder in Val d'Isere and well for my 31st I had the same. It coincided with my 2nd touring day and we went back country. We had had 10cm of snow over the weekend and we caught up with our Guide Steve at 9am at the
base station. From here it was decided to head over to the left of the Fernie resort through the boulder garden or Mammoth droppings over the pass into Mongolia bowl, from there we climbed up the next ridge and then boarded the north aspect back down into Mongolia for some epic lines through the trees in fresh.. Even in the worst year on record (according to the locals we all should have been here last year) you can still find beautiful fresh powder in Fernie if you know where to go. So that was Monday, powder for my birthday and a epic day hiking.
So that's it for the update. Next is the story of the Boulder Hut an epic journey indeed.
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Ailsa
non-member comment
boarders are slow!
Sorry Debs but I still doubt you will keep up with us!!, eat my words I hear...... looking forward to it. :o)