FERNIE 22.FEBRUARY - 1.MARCH 2002 snow report
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horse sledges brought people back to their lodges, we were taken down the
mountain by an old school bus which was very nice too. The horses
though were beatiful and hopefully used to the cold, we skiers were freezing
when the sun went down behind the Mammoth and Elephant Head mountains. When it comes to telemark skiers, there are lots of them. Usually in Europe you know when you see a telemark skier that he/she is probably from Scandianvia. Here there are locals or they could be from Alaska! |
| Landed in Calgary, the trip to Fernie was supposed to take 3 hours. It though started to snow and we had to sleep in the Pincher Creek town hall gymnasium since the mountain pass was closed and the hotels were full. We found out the next morning from our caretakers radio that the other side of the pass (British Columbia) had fired their snow plough drivers for the year, the pass opened finally around 11am after we had been eating breakfast on the Alberta side of the pass and been backed on by one of their plough drivers (this made us get first hand information on when the pass would open, don't trust the police when it comes to all information!) | ||
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| We got in at midday and then we headed for the slopes 1/2 an hour later. We were told that only one lift was open, but there were more tracks being opened during the day and we found out that the locals are totally MAD. In Europe you usually get some powder by yourself even days after the snowfall, but here the rumor spread fast on which tracks that would open and the queues were big. Our guide managed to get the word on when the Cedar Bowl would open and we got some real good and fresh powder! GREAT! Later during the week we had to walk a little extra to get some powder in Fish bowl. I didn't get time to take any pictures the first day.... Here pictures from Lizard bowl and the "Face" lift we had to walk. | ||
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| Here we are heading up in Cedar bowl to ski down Fish bowl. Here is a video from Fish bowl 2.3MB. We always needed a break at the top, a sign was put up for warning skiers. | ||
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| It was pretty cold this week, -17°C in the morning and shimmering white frozen air. Here we start the day with the cold and long "Timber bowl express quad" lift and ski down "Puff" to take the "White pass quad" and follow the ridge to find a nice place to ski down... | ||
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| Fernie downtown has 3 good sports shops and we had a lovely dinner at the "Old Elevator" where the steaks and the lamb were really delicious. After-ski we normally had at our hotel the "Grand Central hotel" and we had excellent lunches at the lift area and it sounded like some had excellent after-ski there too! | |
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The last day we went heli-skiing in the Golden ski area, 3.5 hours drive north. Unfortunately the snow was tricky to ski since it was not considered safe to ski the steep areas. The snow was hard on top due to wind on the higher areas of the mountains and a bit heavy in the lower areas. But some of the pictures probably look kind of nice. It was exciting before every take off when we were gathered around the guide’s back-pack and it was all snow every where! |
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Calgary airport was much nicer to leave from than to arrive in. Just stay in the shop/food area for as long as possible. They had a space exibition there, cool. |
