Fernie - A quaint little drinking town with a ski problem

OK, time to get this story up to date. We've been in Fernie for a month and a bit now - a total of 35 days on the hill (32 for Her Laziness) and another 6 each in Lake Louise means that we've skied six or seven holidays worth already. But lets recap on the events since we left Lake Louise.

We arrived via Banff in the early hours of December 9th (the Greyhound again) and headed straight to the Raging Elk Hostel for some much needed sleep. The hostel, run by Joe and Sadie, has much to recommend it, not least the pool table, free pancake breakfast and huge TV. The ski season didn't start until the 10th so we spent the day looking round the town and doing some shopping. Not knowing anything about Fernie before we arrived, we were pleasently surprised to see that it in no way resembled Lake Louise - they've got supermarkets, pubs, a cinema and ski shops galore here.

Time for a picture - here's a view of the ski hill from the hostel. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much sun here so this is about as good a view as you get from town.

Opening day was all a bit hectic. First lift was at 9.00 and we were in the queue when the resort opened for the season. Things did calm down after the initial rush however - and we soon got used to big open empty pistes - the next picture was a typical piste... Jen suggests we should all "look at the lovely corduroy"( a reference to the groomed piste below. That's certainly not why I invested in fat skis. Don't worry though, I soon got her into the steeper and deeper stuff - she foolishly follows where I go, and I don't always tell her where that's going to be :-)

So the skiing is good and the company is good (mostly boarders and not skiers, but still nice people). It's easy to meet people because the town is pretty small, in fact it's hard to walk the 4 blocks to the supermarket without bumping into someone you know . Lets see some of the people we've met...

Back Row: Claire (Sydney, she's a Snowboarder For Christ), Me, Jenna and Tyson (Brisbane) Front Row: Matt and Hugh (Toronto), Kurt (Calgary) and Steve (somewhere in Oz, he hurt his back but is back boarding again).

Life in Fernie is party party party. It's just one excuse to celebrate after another. The first big official occassion was the Mogul Smoker - December 17th. Traditionally skis are sacrificed to the snow gods on a bonfire, now it's just an excuse to have a big party with a big bonfire. And a big party it was - they bused over 500 happy revellers in and bused us back home again. With 14 kegs, various DJs and bands, 3 fire pits and the famous Mogul Smoker cocktail (don't remember exactly what was in it but it involved hot chocolate and rum, yum) - it was probably the coolest party we'd all been too (another reference to the temp rather than the local death metal band). It was about the coldest night ever, somewhere around -30 C, plus it was the first time we'd experienced self cooling beer, the top froze over if you didn't drink it quickly enough...

And here we are... your hosts with Tyson, Jenna and a welcome big fire. (Probably about 50 C colder than the Aussies are used to at this time of year.)

It being the done thing to share houses round here, we found a room in a house, and moved out of the Hostel a couple of days after the Mogul Smoker (we could have moved in before but it took a day to recover from the excesses of the night, plus it seemed like a good idea if we kept our embarassments confined to the hostel...)

Home Sweet Home

That's our window, top right, 802A 8th Street and 6th Avenue, you can see the hostel in the background on the left. We share the place with Shirley (Canadian, she looks after the place), Sam (from near Manchester - supports Everton which makes me smile), Mark and Trish (Melbourne) and Barb (local, runs a massage and general pampering business at the hill), plus Mickey the dog and the two cats, Goolie and Jack. Trish left this morning for home via Vancouver and Sydney, and we all miss her.

Here's Col with Sam ( left) and Mark (right).

So life is a whirlwind of skiing, more skiing and visits to the pub - I'll just interrupt myself here to give you the low down on drinking in Fernie. The best places seem to be The Pub, The Central and The Royal. There tends to be a different special night at a different bar most nights i.e. Mondays in the Pub for cheap jugs, Tuesdays are cheap wings in the Pub and Jam night in the Central, etc. The usual is a jug of Kokanee for anything up to $14. Kokanee is a bit special because no matter how much I drink, I don't seem to get a hangover (and trust me, this theory has been thoroughly tested). It sometimes takes a day to sober up mind, but no headaches!

Anyhow, I digress - before we knew it we had another excuse to celebrate. CHRISTMAS!! We were invited to the "pot luck" at the hostel on Christmas Eve. Everybody brings a dish and the hostel provides the turkey. Jen made yorkshire puddings and a bucket load of sprouts while I made a passable version of mum's trifle, three things that are guaranteed to make a special christmas dinner...

A good feed was had by all and we eventually departed for the Central and maybe the Royal - it all gets a bit a hazy, but having consulted the camera I can tell you that we played some pool, drank some tasty Absolute shots (thanks Kris) and finished in the Central. And as this was only Christmas Eve we did it all again at our house the next day...

Christmas dinner at home with Lynn and Kris (Norway and Sweden) and Claire (Sydney, you met her earlier on at the hostel, she's a Snowboarder For Christ's Sake). Mmmmm, sprouts. And although it's a little late (or maybe extremely earlier)...

HAPPY CHRISTMAS !!!!

What did you get for Christmas Jen?

Diamonds are indeed a girl's best friend.

So with Christmas out of the way there was nothing to do but ski and recover in time for New Year. I won't bore you with the details, but there was drinking at the hostel and a house party with a keg disguised as a snow man and I think fireworks were involved. Again, it gets a bit hazy. OK, just one photo...

And that's about all there is to Fernie. It's an old mining town by the way and the local legend involves the Griz, he's responsible for all the snow. It's been successfully snowing for about three weeks now - a little slow to get going, and we had a wet week around christmas, but since then we've had buckets of the stuff. There's a 3 metre base and parts of the hill are closed due to avalanche risk, but all in all it's a great place to ski. Lots of steeps, plenty of deeps and trees galore. I'll finish with some pictures from the hill - then Jen can tell you what's really going on.

Jen on skis!!!

Hmmm, new goggles??

Almost forgot, it was Todd's birthday on 7th January. He cooked us all a huge Mexican meal of Nachos, Salad and the best Enchiladas you could ever want. And Jen made a cake.

Thanks Col.

Now let's see what is there left to tell? We must do a bit more than ski, party and ski... There's lounging about on the sofas trying to get control of the remote for a start... (i found the food network- some things never change no matter what country i'm in!), Monday night there's Yoga, we all go to support 'The GhostRiders' the local Ice Hockey team each week, I joined the library, Tuesdays is cinema night (at 2 quid a ticket it can't be bad), Col's Pool game has improved, we have starring roles in the new Fernie TV commercial (ok maybe not starring but we're in it!) and did we mention how pretty the place is? In fact we like it so much we've decided to stay in Fernie for an extra month!!

So there's plenty of time left to do another update from North America. Watch out for my next installment of 'Crouching Jen Hidden toilet roll' coming to a screen near you soon. In the mean time remember ... we're not here for a long time, we're here for a good time!

Lake Louise, Canada

Still a bit behind with this little tale of ours, but for our latest installment I'd like to tell you about our time in Lake Louise. Is everybody sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

Let's see now, from Seattle we took the bus to Vancouver in search of skis. We'd managed to convince ourselves that buying new skis was probably the best thing to do in the long run. Or rather, I'd managed to convince Jen that I deserved to buy new skis, and also that snowblades in deep snow weren't a good idea so she needed skis too. And very happy we are with our new purchases (for those that are interested, I've got the K2 Seth Vicious in 169cm and Jen has Rossignol Scratch Pros in 138cm), pictured below on the Paradise Chair at Lake Louise...

So from Vancouver we managed to catch the Greyhound bus the same day we arrived for the 17 hour trip to Lake Louise which left at 12.45 am. Not a trip we were looking forward to, but the train that I'd planned on taking actually went to Jasper rather than Banff and cost over 300 dollars each, so the bus it would have to be.

Thanks Col. So after many uncomfortable hours on the greyhound bus we're dropped off in a small car park and ask directions to Lake Louise village only to discover that we we're already in it; all 4 shops worth. Luckily one of those shops is a ski shop so we get bindings fitted on the lovely new skis and go off to a rather luxury looking hostel. Here's the view of the river by the hostel..

nice innit.

Now the more observant of you might notice the river is frozen. Well it would be, its FREEZING in Lake Louise. In fact its much much less than freezing it's averaging minus 25 and all the hairs in my nostrils were frozen solid which feels pretty wierd. Plus with the wind chill it gets down to minus 40! Take a look at this...

Needless to say I was dressed as a michellin man for most of the time.

So, what did we do in Lake Louise, apart from the actual sliding down mountains? We watched professionals slalom down a pretty steep course at a million miles an hour, we slid down a hill in the dark sat on plastic sledges and blow-up boats (arriving at the bottom like fully grown snowmen), Col won 2 bars of chocolate in the Hostel Pool tournament (i.e. he won the tournament - the old magic is still there), we drank a lot of hot chocolate and tried to defrost every now and again.

But for most of the time I felt like I was on the 'Top of the World, ma, top of the world'...

Anyone recognise that nose?

After a week it was time to move on. We packed up our bags and in the wait for the next greyhound outta town (Greyhounds make a special habit of leaving at ridiculous times) we took a walk to the Lake itself. When I say walk, I of course mean hike. Do you know how difficult it is to walk in snow for hours up hill? After the first ten minutes of oohing and ahhing at how pretty the trees are and how great the sound of snow crunching underfoot is, you begin to wonder if you've accidentally taken the long route to the Lake... which of course we had ;-)

The lake is the white thing in the background with people standing on it.

So that ends our little story about Lake Louise, next stop Fernie. See you there!