Fernie - 50 not out

To celebrate 50 days of skiing at Fernie (last Saturday) I thought I'd show you all what a great mountain there is here.

(Any LPTers out there can probably imagine the victory dance I'm about to perform and the smug grin I'll be wearing while doing it - gently though, it was ANOTHER long day at the hill.)

Lets start with the official trail map courtesy of skifernie.com - you may want to have a look here http://www.skifernie.com/themountain/trails.asp for a snazzy interactive version.

If I'm not mistaken that's five bowls of fun - Siberia, Timber, Currie, Lizard and Cedar. And if you want to go out of bounds there's also Fish Bowl on the far side of Cedar.

The day usually starts with a walk down to the hitching spot, on the highway just over the bridge. There's a good view of the hill from there - at least when there isn't any cloud, which is pretty rare in these parts. We've had one perfectly clear day since we arrived in early december, and maybe 4 days that could be described as sunny. And the reason people hitch to the hill is because there's no free shuttle and it's too far to walk.

Right to left - Fish, Cedar, Lizard and you can just see a bit of Currie Bowl.

So, the daily grind begins...

From the base you've got two main options - up the Timber Express and onto the White Pass Chair to access the Siberia, Timber and Currie bowls, or up the Elk Chair heading for the Boomerang or Great Bear Chairs and into the Lizard or Cedar bowls.

That's the Timber Chair in the top right. Looks like this was taken from the White Pass Chair around the bottom of Quite Right. The trees on the other side of Timber Chair are Big Bang and the Mitchy Chutes and the busy (by Fernie standards) trail is 100% taking everybody down to White Pass.

If we spin around in the chair we get a good view of the Knot Chutes - there's a traverse running through the middle of them that ranges from easy to embarassing depending on snow conditions. The embarassing part is due to everybody on the lift getting a perfect view when things go wrong.

There's also a lower traverse below the chutes and both of them give an alternative way into the Currie bowl. Either down here, which might be Gotta Go but I'm not too sure...

or down the Anaconda Glades which almost always have great snow and are as steep as you'll ever want in places. There's also a good view of town from the top...

Anyway, out of time for now, I'll have to finish this tomorrow (and Bromwell High is on).