Fernie

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We arrived in Fernie nearly 3 weeks ago, to heavy snow, that turned into rain on our arrival and has been absent since. Our journey was pretty stress free, other than the fact that our snowboard bag weighed 37kgs so we had to take some stuff out and put it with our other hold luggage and pay £44 extra!

Our place here is pretty sweet. We have our own en-suite and very comfy double bed(albeit it could do with being a bit bigger Sam takes up half the bed!) we have free wi-fi, satellite TV, and hot room, 2 massive fridges and a pretty well equipt kitchen! Our landlords are amazing, they keep asking what else we need to make our stay more comfortable, so inevitably I came up with a list☺

We are sharing with 2 ozzie couples that are lifties and 2 really sweet French guys…

Fernie is a really small but very sweet town, everyone here is soo nice complete strangers actually stop on the street to say hi! We started our course 2 weeks ago but before that we used to hitch home from the base of the resort as it is about 5km s from where we are staying we met all sorts of cool people along the way, one day we got a lift in an old hearse, which was owed buy a guy who was in a local band, he managed to fit 8 of us into his car with snowboards!!!

There are some really cool bars and restaurants too. Monday night they have wings night, they are 45c per wing! Pretty cheap. We have also found ourselves a weekly Thursday night poker tournament which Sam and I are doing pretty well at most weeks! We have also been to see a few hockey matches which are quite an eye opener! We have only been watching the junior’s league but it actually seems to be more of a boxing match rather than playing hockey!

The mountain is really nice, beautiful views and lots of varied terrain though mostly steep and narrow. There are lots of trees to watch out for just off the piste. Unfortunately new to me they have NO bubble lifts to get to the top only chairs, so it’s quite windy and cold sometimes on the way up! The snow hasn’t been legendary Fernie style but up till now its still been better than when we have been in Europe, though I fear it we don’t get more snow soon that might change! Today was -21, it was so cold if you had your face uncovered you got frostbite!

So far I have nearly mastered switch ridding and oli’s, I have also been attempting a few small jumps (sometimes I land them sometimes I don’t!) Sams group is the advanced group and one guys has already dislocated his shoulder. Sam had a gnarly fall and we weren’t too sure if he got concussed so we took him town to ski patrol medi centre, (which by the way is free!) they checked his eyes and gave him some Oxygen (see pics) to see if he was feeling a bit more with it and then he was fine which was great.

We have been pretty rubbish with taking pics but I have attached a few that we have taken so far!

Sam here.. today I went split boarding and back country touring on a split board.. it was a wicked day out and a nice taster for our four day back country lodge trip. We toured on the split boards into the lost boys area near the rock garden/mammoth droppings then over into Mongolia bowl.. I had 3 powder runs in foot deep fresh which is the snow of the trip.. 6.5 hours of hiking up hills for 3 runs and the best runs I've had in the last three weeks. The lessons are pretty cool and I'm sure my riding is improving dramatically but getting desperate for some decent snow.. so far it is a crummy season in Fernie and wishing I went to Europe where they are having a megga season.. but hey we have time and Fernie and Canada is a very cool place to be even in a crummy season.

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