so this is my first journal entry to snowboard.com and my main goal of doing this is to be able to profile a winter in Fernie, BC. Hopefully others can get a glimpse into this amazing, eclectic town that offers so much....especially in the winter time ............ cheers
wednesday dec 15th 4:54pm mst
went riding today on a day off , the boomerang, face lift and haul back are not open yet because the ill fated Pineapple Express hit Fernie with a punch in the face on Friday (opening day)!!??! unreal .... I could not believe it .... i was lucky enough to get some wicked turns on tuesday and wednesday of last week while setting up the lifts for opening day, and by friday afternoon the hill was reduced to nothing more than a skating rink. We got a huge amount of rain courtesy of a southern storm from Hawaii, it was down right depressing to see the hill get crippled like that. Myself, on the other hand got treated to the goods for 2 days and decided to sleep in on friday due to a mean hangout no thanks to The Pub on thursday.
I went up on saturday with my old buddies Randy(faceshots) and Nick. Randy decided to take up FAR on their snowcheck guarantee, so we went right up timber to whitepass in search of something to get stoked on.... a jump, maybe a roller, a jib, anything!!! but to no avail. it was utter trash so we went down within the hour and got a refund for Randy's ticket....no harm, no foul.
I tried to get a few runs in on sunday but thanks to my buddy Steve's birthday the night before, the plan never came together in the end, but i don't think i missed too much. The Eldo and Eshwigs were the flavour that evening and then monday was my first day back at work with public on the lifts. Monday was a scary day riding out on the hill, things were very icy and it was impossible to get an edge in the snow . Good things come to those who wait, right? So Tuesday we got 4 cm's on top of all that ice and the groomers became quite fun to ride. I had to be up there all day so at least i had some fun riding around from lift to lift with a little bit of freshies. Now that i worked 2 days, it was on to my days off, yee-haw.
Today's temperature was above average at about -3 at the top and 1 at the bottom. The sun was shining and i was all ready to go riding with my old buddy Marc Polidoro. We met up with Grout, Doyle, Ben, Paul and Zack and proceeded to Lizard bowl. We went straight to old faithful, the cascade jump run. There were not too many jumps available but just being with this group of crazy idiots made the day awesome. Everyone was feeding off each others riding and by the second run we were finding natural hits and drops that were marginal but we didn't seem to care about that. Huge backside shiftys and melons were the trick of the day and by the afternoon our buddy Malcom had dug out the cascade kicker into a awesome jump. The snow had softened up from the sun and we were straight-lining everything like complete idiots. I love the fact that with snowboarding, the conditions are not always the basis of a good day riding. It's all about the people with you at that time, that moment. Today was a prime example of that. Me and Marc spent all day reminising about our days riding from seasons past. Today will probably be one of those days that i remember for ever. The conditions were awful but we had so much fun.
Now i sit here with a Kokanee in hand. The smell of my snowboard boots at my feet make me want to get up and move them before i finish this log entry but i think i can put up with them for another 2 minutes. Tomorrow should be another fun day up at the hill before i go home to Calgary for 3 days without riding. I hope to get my hands on an X-Box or PS2 while i am home to get my fill of Coolboarders or Tony Hawk until i make it back to Fernie.
until next time
Scott
