Maybe its just my eye-wear that's making me feel so good about life in Fernie.



More pics to come tomorrow...

I have actually made it onto a page of the BBCi website! God I'm chuffed. It may be at the bottom, but it's a start!

Here I am!

The snow just won't stop. The stats are ridiculous: we've had nearly 30 inches of new snow since Saturday and about 8 inches alone last night. But we are also experiencing "Arctic Air", and guess what: that's pretty cold (-22 at the top today). All the ski lifts have warnings about frostbite and you can see a lot of people who have been bitten down in the resort.

So in case anyone out there is imagining me crusing (majestically!) through open glades of snow, the crystals glinting in the sparkling mountain air and the wind rushing through where my hair once was, lets talk layering.

Bottom Half
========
1 pair "hot chilly's" thermal ski socks
1 pair thermal long johns
1 pair fleece trousers
1 pair gore-tex over-trousers (these feature a simon cowell-esque design: right up to my armpits - they rule!)

Top Half
======
1 poly-pro base layer
1 thermal turtleneck jumper
1 micro fleece jumper
1 thick fleece jumper
1 snow-proof shell jacket

Average number of Patagonia garments per day: 4

For my hands I've got a pair of thermal inner gloves and some huge mittens that come half-way up to my elbow. On my head I've got a scary neoprene face-mask that covers my chin, cheeks and nose. With my hat and my goggles and with the hood of my jacket up, I don't have any part of me exposed. I look quite a sight; I must get someone to take a pic! But the result is I'm toasty warm :)

mmmmm warm. Warm is good.

I'm taking the first Sunday of the course as a proper day of rest. My legs were starting to ache so I've dedicated today to trying to get some pictures up here on the interweb. Now the snow has stopped (after about 38 hours non stop!) I can also get cracking on the backyard rink, but that means shovelling about 6 inches of snow off the garden so I might hang here in the cafe for a bit longer.

This weekend has seen Fernie host a leg of the freestyle skiing World Cup. That means mogul skiing and aerials [basically high diving off a ramp and on skis - got it?] This is quite a big event for the town and the open ceremony featured the mayor, some mounties and the local First Nation group (i.e Native Americans/Canadian?) do a turn. I was a volunteer on the opening ceremony and I bravely volunteered to man the fire pit when I realised it meant standing next to the fire and chucking logs on it. That's my kind of community service. On Saturday I also helped out set up the moguls course. This meant a 6am start and skiing down from the lift to the start of the course before the sun was up which was a new experience for me. I was involved in attaching sponsors' banners to the netting down the side which was quite tiring work with all the clambering up and down through the deep snow. So once I was done I did a couple of runs and called it a day. It was finally busy on the ski hill this weekend. I even had to (whisper it) queue for a lift!! After skiing during the week and being thoroughly spoiled by having the resort to ourselves it was a shock to find even modest sized queues.

Today has dawned sunny and bright, the first real sunshine of our trip. It's also a lot colder: the temperature has dropped from about 0 degrees in town to -15. Brrrr. But at least its clear and I've been able to see the mountain tops that surround Fernie: it's quite spectacular.

Now for the pics. I'll leave them as links as time is money here in Mug Shots bistro and cyber cafe! The pictures aren't massive: they are all <200kb so dont be afraid of monster downloads!

First of all, here is home. A well charming and well appointed detached residence only minutes from historic downtown Fernie! The ice rink is going to be off to the left as you look at it. Here is the view from the front door. Not bad eh!

Here is downtown Fernie. It's Sunday morning but it doesn't get much busier. In the background you can see the ski hill, with the runs cut through the trees.

Up on the hill this is the Bear run where they were holding the moguls race. And here is a brave competitor! At the top of the Bear is the drop in to Cedar bowl. The bowl was closed because of avalance risk but they should open it soon and with all that new snow its going to be sweet! The biggest of the 5 bowls on the mountain is Lizard Bowl which has got some really great skiing through the trees.

So I hope that gives you a flavour of whats going down.

First day on the slopes. Wow!

First things first: the slopes seem deserted. On my warm up runs this morning there I didnt see anyone else on the runs I was doing. It was glorious: the pistes had been perfectly groomed and the going was just perfect. I was beaming at the bottom.

We then met up with our instructors and were split up into groups of about 8 each. There were no actual lessons today, just a tour of the area and a chance to find our feet. We enjoyed some great cruising. I thought the conditions were fantastic but apparent the locals are unimpressed: there's been no fresh snow for a week so they think its a bit grim. We all kept comparing things to skiing in Europe and I have to say Europe didn't come out too well. So we had a great day being shown around by our instructor Colleen. The snow at the top of the mountain was really soft but you can really see what an amazing place this is once a big snowfall comes in. My group is all about 18-19 years old but I managed to keep up! On the last run of the day my thighs started to throb so I was happy to retreat to the bar.

My new skis are running very nicely and my 15 year old boots are providing much entertainment for everyone else. I've also bought a bright orange ski jacket and my housemates say they can spot me on the hill a mile off. So I'm looking good and feeling great - not a bad start!

First day in Fernie. The flight over was fine and I've had a decent night's sleep but I'm not really feeling quite right just yet. Skiing starts in earnest tomorrow so I hope one more good kip will do it. Today we've been to pick up our ski passes and have a tour of the town and the ski shops. It turns out there was some Patagonia clothing I didn't have, so I quickly bought it all.

I'm in a house with 8 people. So far we're all getting on fine and they seem like a nice bunch. There's 75 people on the course all told and most are quite young: our house is definately the mature-students residence! The good news is the organisers are making a backyard ice rink in our garden. How thoughtful.

Fernie itself is laid out at the foot of the valley with the ski hill arrayed along the mountainside in front of us. You can see all the runs carved through the trees. It's very exciting actually; especially after spending so long looking at it all on the webcam.

Superb!

After Dame Fate (TFM) intervened on the day of the wedding, Lucy and I resolved to make it all the way to see the wonders of Johnston Canyon. Because anything called Johnston has gotta rule, right?







It rules!

Claire and Anne - we did it for you!

The first car came by about 5 minutes later. They stopped to see if they could help (but then this is Canada - EVERY car that came along stopped). A cellphone was produced and we tried the CAA. Busy. So I tried the Thrifty Car rental road-side assistance number for Toyota. I thought it was strange that each make had a different number to ring and wondered if the service got steadily better the more prestigious the marque. If that was the case then what followed didn't say much for Toyotas.



"Hi there - my car's come of the road. We are stuck in a snowdrift; we need a tow truck or something."

"My membership number? I'm not a member, I've just rented this car and this was the telephone number I found"

"The what number? Errr.. where will I find that?"

I read off anything that looked like an official kind of number on the rental form. Not your basic integers or ordinal numbers but the real long numbers. Some had letters in them: they had to work. But they didn't. So they asked for my address.

".. 8HP, London...England?..That's right... No I'm not a member, I've just rented this car and this was the telephone number I found"

"The mileage? Do you really need me to tell you the mileage? It's just that it's -25 here, we've got a bit of a situation. Can't you send a truck and can we sort this all out later. No? OK - no sure I understand but still.. Sure I'll hold."

I held. There wasn't much else I could do. I had had to take my glove off to dial the number and hold the phone and by now my hand was frozen into a phone-holding grip. So I held. I hadn't got to the bit about us going to a wedding today and the fact that the vicar was sitting in the back of the car, but I was keeping my powder dry.

"Oh Hi .. great... yeah. We are on the Bow Valley Parkway. Between Banff and Johnston Canyon.... erm Alberta ... that's Canada... Calgary's the nearest city! Yeah I'll hold".

I could hold, but the phone couldn't. The cold wasn't just freezing my hands: the phone had died and that call that was going nowhere went no further.

This was clearly all my fault. I shouldn't have gone to that party the night before and introduced myself as the bride-to-be's ex-boyfriend "here to cause trouble". When they learned that I had burried the vicar in a snowdrift they might just think I wasn't joking.



By then a second car had stopped and a new phone was offered. One call to the hotel we were staying at sorted the problem: a tow truck was on its way.

That news didn't deter the third car to stop: a 4x4 with a group of ice-climbers all gung ho for adventure. They leapt out, jumped into the ditch and studied our predicament. I told them about the wedding, showed them the vicar. They talked knots and promised to help us out. The park ranger turned up and lent them a tow rope. He also added some knot suggestions into the knotty melting pot. In the end the knot wasn't the problem - the tow rope snapped on first heave. The ice-climbers were sanguine about their loss (of adventure), wished us luck and drove off.



Chris, the park ranger, hung around though. He checked with his base that help comming and assured us it was. I passed by his truck as he was talking on the radio and overheard this final exchange:

Ranger Chris: "They need to be at a wedding in Canmore at 4"

Base: [pause] "We'll get 'em there"

I love Canada!