UKC

Trip report: Fernie, B.C

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 Gasmerchant 19 Mar 2015
I recently spent about two weeks out there and despite having a bad snow year I had a good time and my skiing came on quite a bit. Thanks to Edradour for advice on previous thread and via pm.

We stayed with Canadian Powder Tours, which is an owner operated and run set up in west Fernie. We flew in via Calgary, which is a 3.5hr transfer. Susan, the owner, grew up and studied in the UK, before heading back to Canada to set up the business. We all enjoyed the place, there's space for about 10-12, drying-room, outdoor hot-tub, honesty bar (beer/wine), and it's clean and warm and has a very laid back atmosphere. Food was great and a fair amount of it sourced locally. Guiding is provided (complimentary), and if you organise passes and hire through CPT, you get discounted rates. We got dropped of to the ski area each morning, but had to make our own way back in the afternoons ($3.50 one way ticket on shuttle bus, or $30 for 10 one way fares, or $20 taxi if you've missed the last shuttle - 17:15 - if you've hit the apres bar and stayed). The chalet is about a 15 minute walk to town.

Town itself is pretty much a one high street affair - there are other places along the main highway through town (hockey rink/curling venue/restaurants), but most nightlife is on 2nd Ave. There are few good pubs and restaurants, and outdoor shops. The best for touring are most probably The Guides Hut or Gear Hub. Most of the shops only sell a few lines of gear, apparently so that they don't step on each others toes - it's a small town after all. One of the places have notices up saying that if more than 15cm of snow fell - they'll only open at lunch time. The Royal is most probably the liveliest place in town and did one or two party nights while we were there (German Sparkle party) - everyone makes an effort, and it's mainly a ski-bum/local crowd. The Brickhouse is most probably the go to place for general pub drinking and food. Best restaurant we went to was the Cattle Company - awesome food and service. There's a curry house and Sushi place too - but we didn't check them out (did a sushi party in the chalet instead).

The skiing itself is great, despite the lack of fresh snow (we only got a couple of centimetres one day) it stayed cold and the pistes/groomers remained in good nick. They're wide and quiet. The largest lift queue was about 20 people on a Saturday. The skiing is quite steep, but nothing too scary, until you head off piste - which we didn't do till later in the trip because of the bullet hard ice. Most of the black runs, and certainly none of the double black runs are groomed. There's an immense scope for touring. I hired Volkl Kendo's and Mantra's which I liked. I preferred the Kendo's as the they were lighter and narrower, and more forgiving. The Mantras are about 100mm underfoot iirc, and were great, but needed a hard charging skier on them.

I bought a touring set-up while there and saved about £300 plus. I got 178cm Volkl BMT109's, with Marker Kingpin bindings and Technica Cochise boots. The Volkl's are slightly rockered, but not stupidly so. I found them very light (duh), and stupidly easy to turn. They don't feel like a fat ski at all. I stayed on the groomers mostly, but still managed to core-shot one ski - which was easily patched by the ski shop at the rentals place on the slope - so I suspect the bases are somewhat thin! Didn't have any dramas with the Kingpins, clipped in fine, didn't ice up and easy enough to get into/out of.

We're going back next year to hopefully hit the powder we missed. I missed out on an avi awareness course and steep and deep camp due to the conditions. Psyched to get some touring done - realistically next season though.

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