Fernie by Em

It’s been a couple of days since we’ve done any serious interwebbing – it’s been a bit difficult to get hold of any in this town (population 4,000) since there’s only one internet café and it only has 2 of 6 computers functional. So we drove round town looking for unsecured wireless, me lying on the sofa in the back of the van (explain later) holding a laptop and screaming suddenly every few blocks ‘Got one!! Drive, drive, this way! Fifty percent! Eighty-four percent!! Thirty eight percent!!’ and John howling back ‘I can’t go down there, the van won’t fit!! Shit, we’re stuck!! How is it now?!?’ Finally we found a spot with wireless where the van can go. In the winter here people use their car parks to store snow from the roads. (What for? What possibly for???)

Fernie is a nice town, though it gives you some idea of the size of the place when the taxi driver tells you that Friday night ‘starts in Central and you work your way from there to the Royal.’ (Work through where, you wonder. Simple: you start in the Central, you finish in the Royal. A two pub crawl, rural Canadian style.)

Here are the bowls on Fernie hill. I was briefly in the far left one.

So…mixed experiences at Fernie so far…maybe I should let John rhapsodise about the snow (I must hook him up to a tape-recorder while he rides and transcribe-it‘s hilarious. Most of the time all I can see is a Cheshire-cat grin below a hat, up to the ears in snow, accompanied by non-stop giggling and frequent yelling of ‘It’s snowing!!’ I thought it was weed that regressed snowboarders mentally but apparently it’s just flying down a mountain on a tea tray in a snowstorm).

The snow in this town is legendary in Canada - they have had 1.5 METRES of snow in the last week, and it dumped heavily on Wednesday, so when we went out Thursday I was waist-deep in snowdrifts for the first time ever, fluffing and falling my way through the stuff while John threw himself off/into/over things giggling.
Thursday was a great snow day, and once I got the hang of it (body-surfed my way out…whatever) we had a fantastic time. Skiing that much power not so easy when you’ve never lost sight of your skis under four foot of snow before – apparently my face was a picture.

Unfortunately Friday didn’t go so well – on our second run of the morning we decided to leap into a powder bowl (four bowls here and the snow was untouched, arm-pit deep!). John made it up the other side, but I didn’t. This is how I got down:






Tim and Steve did a really good job skiing down the mountain with an eight-foot long metal toboggan full of me, but it is pretty unsettling to shoot backwards down a hill headfirst strapped into a stretcher and covered with a tarp, to cheery and energetic cries of ‘Gonna get a little rough here, Emily, sorry! This bit comin’ up is pretty darn fast, hang in there!’ (She’s heard that before, boys…JB)

How I found myself hitched upside down behind Tim (with Steve steering) is this: after pausing at the top to give some pompous and patronising advice to another skier too nervous to jump into the bowl, I sailed off and promptly stacked it 20 yards in. Caught one ski in the snow but the ski didn’t snap off, and I went the other way. One distinct crunch later and I was upside down in the snow howling about my twisted knee. John, being quite far away at this point, didn’t realise I was hurt and wasn’t sure why I lay down for ten minutes then spent 25 more shuffling down the hill on my bum. Maybe, he thought, I’d forgotten I had skis on. At any rate he settled down to wait for me and amused himself taking pictures of a field of snow six foot deep planted with swearing, sweating people, most of whom only had half a set of equipment, most of it not theirs. Those not stacking it down the hill were in a serious minority, mostly snowboarders (smug bastards).

We sent someone for ski patrol as there was no way I could ski down, and they came incredibly quickly, bless them, as I had lost all feeling in my bum.
John’s already mentioned this, but I’ll just say I had x-rays and nothing’s broken, hopefully no real damage, and am planning to be back out on the (nursery) slopes inside a week! Until then it will have to be all après and no ski for me J
It’s pretty cool though, limping into a bar here with this huge great cast on my leg as in the pics below (am assembling a Kinder Egg toy there, coz John bought me four to cheer me up).

On Friday, (mere hours after I was crippled in a monster heli-skiing fest outrunning an avalanche to save a nest of endangered baby snow eagles and carrying an unconscious team-mate on my back) I was in Central, happily slaughtered on half a drink and several large painkillers, being high-fived and graciously accepting calls of ‘Respect, dude!’ ‘Respect to that skier!’ ‘That is commitment, man!!’
Apparently I was thrilled (am a little hazy on the details) and ran back to John to tell him that I was now a local hero.

Since then have been waited on hand and foot, made endless cups of tea and given multiple Kinder Eggs to play with, had movies rented for me (a mistake was made tonight in letting me choose my own – I think it was a children’s movie. Is it worrying that I’m not sure?) and been offered everything from a pony to a flight into Mexico. Which I’m NOT taking, I will be skiing again as soon as possible.
And if not, I’ll do myself a new Planet Terror leg, Rose McGowan style. Much more useful.



N.B. They don’t have the same rules about food colouring here, so the smarties are seriously nuclear – they have blue and purple ones like nothing you’ve seen. I would not give them to children. (I tested them on John and it appears the E-numbers are plentiful.)