Blogs from Fernie, British Columbia, Canada, North America

The Weather is not what it was a few weeks ago with long hot summer day of 30-35 degrees being on high fire warning and the downhill bikers saying it is too dry! My Dad and Sister have finally arrived after i found the airport (note to Calgary you need more signs to the airport), and after two days of work have finished for the summer happy and said at the same time. It has been one of the most amazing summer of my life getting paid to spend my time having fun in the mountains what more could you want........ So Yesterday with bear spry and bear bell at the ready we were off for a nice short hike to see the amazing and beautiful Fairy Creek Fall Waterfall it is a nice short hike ... read more

It's not the places you go that matter, it's the people you meet along the way Normally I wouldn't agree with this statement - I've always valued the destinations while traveling - but I admit that until now, I'd never traveled by bicycle before, not to mention through the Southeast corner of British Columbia. There is a certain spirit in the Kootenays. You can sense things are different here. Maybe it's the fresh air and clean water, or the "outdoorsy" atmosphere that make people interested in the guy with a solar panel strapped to his bike, or perhaps within these huge mountain valleys there's just a little extra room for an open mind - particularily in Nelson, a town that seems more accepting of dreadlocks and hemp clothing than of dandelion-free lawns. During every single day ... read more

Yesterday we left delightful Montana and made what will be our last leg of this amazing journey - back over the border back into Canada. We d had an incredible 20 inches of fresh snow over our last 3 days in Whitefish - that made the snowboarding/skiing epic and the drive out interesting to say the least. The obligatory coffee in Whitefish and we climbed aboard our big F250 Truck and headed north. A small detour to Beaver Lake turned into a minor drama as I managed to tap the brake on ice and slip a wheel into soft snow - despite dropping tyres pressures in a hand freezing -15 C, packing cardboard and evergreen tree branches under the wheels, we just buried deeper into the snow. Sarah and the kids coped very well as things ... read more

So we finally left Fernie (kicking and screaming), our final 3 weeks were totally awesome, we finally got some ‘legendary Fernie pow’, lots of champagne snow. We had lots of fresh dumps and found some wicked runs through trees, and also some good on-piste skiing. We also got lucky as rat ate through one of the grid lines for the whitepass chair which is half way up and a few of the runs off the top of it were only open for hiking, which a lot of people were not keen on doing, however we took full advantage of this and although in total probably hiked about 3 hours a day, we had the most amazing fresh runs ALL DAY, NO LINES other than our own!.. We came back everyday with HUGE smiles on our faces. ... read more

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 ... read more