Fantastic day's skiing today. 32cms of fresh snow was reported this morning and that means plenty of powder to play in. However the pow brings the locals out so the queues for the first lift were pretty scary. But Fernie has this great thing in the lift queues - the singles only line. Well I'm well qualified for this and the idea is that skiers on their own fill in the gaps and thus you have 4 people on every lift. With that I was soon up and away. Best run of the morning was Sunnyside. It was thigh to waist deep powder all the way down and face shot after face shot as the snow billowed up in my face. I was picking snow out of the breast pocket of my jacket at the bottom and I hadn't fallen over once! It doesn't get much better than that.

After 3 or 4 runs I went back down the base and changed into the Telemark skis that I had rented for the day. Nonstop had organised a "cross dressing" day where you could change sports and give something else a go. I didn't fancy any boarding and I'd always wanted to try Telemark so today was the day. Basically Telemarking is a cross between downhill and cross country skiing: you use a classic downhill/alpine ski with a crosscountry style binding that leaves your heal free to move. It looks hard work: I always thought it was for skiers who thought downhill skiing wasn't hard enough work as it is. It turns out I was right: it IS hard work! But great fun!! It's so gracefull and really enjoyable. There were 5 of us in the class and our instructor, Johnny, was terrific. We seemed to make excellent progress and soon we were riding the chairlift and heading further up the mountain. I've even gone and entered the Telemark race tomorrow to mark the start of Fernie's "Griz Days" celebrations!