This weekend was ThoughtBoarder, the TW Canada ski trip. I was delighted to hear it was going to be in Fernie this year but I feel a lot of hometown pride for that place so I wanted Fernie to put on a good show. The old girl did me proud!

The stats this winter are just crazy: year to date they have had 741cms of snow, of which 156 fell in the week before we arrived! That, my friends, all adds up to a perfect storm of winter sports awesomeness.


I thought we had missed most of the deep fresh snow and Saturday was the busiest I've ever seen Fernie but the conditions were so good and the snow so deep that it was still tremendous fun. We went from first lift till last and I haven't had a better ski day for ages.

Today however was even better and I had one of those Fernie moments I'd only ever listened to enviously in other people's stories. Fernie gets a lot of snow and the ski patrol works really hard trying to keep the place safe. All over the mountain there are signposts and rope lines that say whether an area is open or not. After a big dump lots of areas are closed while the patrol try and make it safe from avalanches. But when they reckon an area is safe they'll flip the signs to open and drop the rope and you can have at her. Obviously if you can be there when they drop the rope then the juiciest pickings are yours but I'd never been so lucky, until today. We came off the top of the White Pass chairlift and as we looked across Currie Bowl I could see folks traversing towards the Saddles, pretty much only the only closed terrain left on the mountain. I thought if they had opened the Saddles, three steep chutes into Lizard Bowl, we could get ourself some fresh, fresh tracks at last. Some of that BC tea, the cold smoke, the white gold - you get the picture....

In fact it was better than I hoped. We got to Corner Pocket just as the ski patrol dropped the rope and I was the fifth guy in. The run down was simply the most fantastic skiing experience I've ever had. Beautiful light untracked snow up to my waist in places. Now that's what I call awesome!