Canada 2001 - a skiing oddity

Don't you just love it when your air transport between resort towns arrives at the airport being no bigger than a sandwich box and you just know that with a full passenger list there is no way that your skis are going to fit in the cargo hold? True to form, we arrived in Cranbrook ski bagless. One of the new members of our group, who flew straight in from Vancouver, arrived without even her main luggage bag. With a little encouragement we convinced the counter staff to arrange to have our bags put on the next bus to Fernie as they would arrive at least 12 hours earlier than the next flight. You wonder why airlines can't plan it better, especially when you consider the cost of transporting the missing bags separately and the added cost of having to pay for hire equipment, etc.

We arrived at Fernie to find our ski bags were awaiting us - having arrived by bus about 30 minutes before us. Alas, we found Fernie (in the south eastern corner of British Columbia) in a worse state than how we had found Silver Star the week before. The snow pack was only a third of the normal base. "The worst season ever" was the catch cry from many a local. Even more floating stones awaited our once pristine ski bases. Soon our skis were pretty well trashed. I, like at least two other members of our group (now grown to 8), had optimistically brought new skis to Canada only to find that rock-hoppers were the order of the day.

Many of the chutes were closed due to lack of snow and to add to the irony of the poor snow pack there was an extreme risk of avalanches due to the fact that an early season rain fall had left a layer of ice below the little snow that existed and presented a very dangerous situation as new snow was not bonding to the ice layer.

The higher areas of the resort presented the best quality snow and those slopes generally in shade were holding up much better. Luckily the cold temperatures kept the snow squeaky dry in these areas.

Due to the lateness of our bookings for Fernie, we were destined to make a few moves between condos around Presidents Weekend (a long weekend in the USA which results in booked-out ski resorts all over North America).

We enjoyed luxurious accommodations in the Cedar Ridge complex - ski in but walk/skate out. Again the apres ski hot tubs were a highlight and although our number had grown to 9 (including our token yank from New York) by the second week in Fernie, the neighbours couldn't resist sharing the tub.

Having condo accommodation right through all 4 weeks meant we could make considerable savings by not having to eat out every night. We took it in turns to select and prepare a swathe of gourmet delights. This gave me (a non cook) ample opportunity to experiment with my lack of culinary skills on the unsuspecting group of good friends desperate for anything to eat after a hard days skiing. The end results were surprisingly good and we had no reported bouts of food poisoning and no complaints about insufficient quantities or range of foods. OK, so the knife throwing chef had us a little concerned.

There was no big dump during our fortnight in Fernie. It did drop 10cms on the morning we were leaving - just to rub it in. And of course, those of you who followed the plight of the very fickle season at Fernie will know how the good snow falls were reserved for April, a long time after February when we were there.

a trace of fresh so badly needed

If you would like to get an idea of what Fernie should be like, then click here to check out the report I wrote about our 1999 trip.

After two weeks in Fernie, our group was now to be reduced in size, with only 5 of us moving onto the next Canadian resort. Luckily we had no travel problems on this leg. Well, not once the manager of our accommodation agents had very kindly supplied his truck to transport out luggage up the hill to a point where the airport transfer bus was prepared to pick us up.

No Linda, we couldn't leave this out