Fernie Day 14: Unbelievable

Thursday, 18:00: I'm sitting in the apartment, the Internet connection has been back up for a couple of days now, I've got a can of Kokanee and a bag of BBQ crips - it's been an epic day.

I woke this morning and let the alarm clock tick over on snooze for around 40 minutes. Yesterday was a good day, fully packed, Mart, Ciara and I just lapped Siberia Bowl. It was empty, had some decent fresh snow in there, and there're lots of good hits to jib on. Great.

Going to bed last night I had this winding down feeling; there're only two days to go, we've been so lucky with the snow, let's just cruise the last couple of days and try to get some photos/film. Mart had said yesterday: wouldn't it be sick if we had a nother big dump before we had to go back? Naturally my response was yeah! But I also said I thought it was unlikely, given how much snow had already fallen. That's why I was snooz'in this morning...

The I heard a knock on my door: Gav, wake up, it's dumped big style. I was up like a rocket. How much? And it went from there. Looking out of our window there's a childrens play area just underneath - it was full of snow, at least a foot deep. How is it possible to get this much snow?

I wanted to take photos. I wanted to get the video camera out. But there simply wasn't time. We wanted to be first in the lift line...

As it happened, we were the 6th chair up. That's 20 people on the mountain before us. The first run this morning was out of this world. We headed up the Timber and then down towards the White Pass Chair. 30 - 40cm of fresh. I had my stance set back this time and was rocking it. Whoops all the way. Probably the best day yet on the hill.

Like I said before I was really wanting to get some pictures or some film; but given that it was a week day, it was too quiet to not get everything you possibly could. Seriously, after getting off the first chair and making our way down to the next chair (White Pass), I looked up at the first chair we'd been on, which is a four-man. It was: empty chair, two people, one person, empty chair, another single...

Epic powder and hardly anyone on the hill.

I didn't wait in a single queue all day long. Unbelievable.

Curry Bowl opened mid-morning but we didn't hit it. Everyone was lining up while we were taking fresh lines through the White Pass area all morning long. There's this face that takes a five minute walk to get to and it keeps just about everyone away, especially when it's mid-week. It's steep and deep. Mart, Simon and I took seven runs through there this morning, and we only saw one other group take our line - once. How is that possible when you're riding in-bounds?

I rode a fresh line every single time. It was the best yet. I wish I had some pictures to show how good it was. My bad. The powder was too good to pass up.

The line we took led us onto a cat track that Mart and I started dropping barrel rolls from - into deep fresh - right under the chair. It was a good feeling. We got some decent whoops from the lift. I rode one of them out clean. Sweet.

Epic day, probably my favourite yet. I even got two fresh runs through Lizard while people were having lunch.

Gotta go now as we're heading into town for dinner. There's one word to describe today: Awesome!