Wednesday, February 19th - Fernie Alpine Resort

As usual, we heard more avalanche bombs going off in the morning, and we hoped that more terrain would open up. The lift lines were drastically reduced, especially now that clouds had returned and the 2 feet of snow had been tracked up in many areas. We headed up the Elk Quad again, and found that Cedar Bowl had opened.

Far across the other side of the bowl, we could see a crowd of people (~30-40 or so) lining up at what looked like a gated area. We didn't know anything about it at the time, but anywhere that a bunch of skiers will line up is usually something to think about. We could see many more people streaming across the traverse to get in the lineup, but it didn't look like the gate was opening anytime soon. It turns out that the gated area is actually access to what is called Snake Ridge, the far skier's left of the resort boundary. It's an area offering up some great steep terrain, with slopes named Gorbie Bowl, and very appropriately, Steep & Deep. Beyond Snake Ridge is Fish Bowl. This bowl is out of bounds, but seems to be a common access point for backcountry skiing. Jon mentioned to me that he did some of the training during his Fernie avalanche course in this area.

We weren't yet familiar with Snake Ridge, but we didn't feel the need to go anywhere when we could look right down below us and see plenty of untracked powder for the taking. Right off the edge at the top of the lift was an area that was just shy of forming a cornice, and provided some great terrain for jumping into the powder below. On the map it's called "Cedar Ridge", and nobody seemed interested in heading that way. We made plans to do some jumps later, but decided to just ski it now while it was all untracked. The turns off Cedar Ridge were definitely another highlight of the trip, everyone got great snow. Once we headed further down into Cedar Bowl, things got more tracked, but we were still able to traverse around for some fresh lines. Cedar bowl had definitely given us some of the best snow on the mountain so far, and it would continue to deliver for the following days. One of the reasons that Cedar Bowl might not get the traffic of some of the others is that it's generally a 3-lift trip to get back. The only lift they've got at the bottom of Cedar Bowl is a T-Bar (known as the "Haul Back") which gives you a little skiing, but basically gives you the vertical to get back to the base area. It's actually interesting that a trail crosses the path of the T-Bar (no tunnel like Stowe used to have) so the skiers on the trail have to time their crossing of the lift line.

At the top of the T-Bar, Ben guided us into some woods in the area of Linda's Run. I don't remember too much about it except that it was sort of brushy, and James, Greg and I ended up having to use a log to cross some ravine and get back to the trail to the base. It was a fun route; first I shaved about two feet of powder off the log, then Greg and James were actually able to ski across the log to get over the ravine. It was a somewhat unnecessary route, but once I got the idea it had to be done ;).

The next trip up the Great Bear Quad, we immediately headed back to Cedar Ridge for some jumping. There were some tracks (mostly ours) but the snow was still looking good for some soft landings. Apparently, we hadn't missed much in not going over to line up for Snake Ridge, people were STILL queued up waiting at the gate. We set up the cameras and had a good ol' time jumping off Cedar Ridge, some folks even went for multiple jumps. One of those was Greg who said that he could have hit it with twice as much speed. After a few times of hearing people say "I should have hit that twice as fast", or "I should have gone twice as big", it became a running joke for the rest of the trip. After jumping, we skied the powder in the Cedar Ridge area, then worked on finding remaining powder in the lower bowl. The big event of that run was a scary tumble that Ben had. He was on a brushy, 45 degree slope in the lower bowl, when a ski got caught on a shrub and he went tumbling. He must have tumbled 40 or 50 feet through shrubs and other scrub, all the while his ski was left stuck in a bush at the top. It was definitely a tough slope, since extracting the ski was an ordeal of its own. Fortunately, although it was a very scary tumbling fall, Ben came out with just a bruised shoulder.

In the afternoon, we headed out to Currie Bowl for the first time. Ben had been in there before and suggested we check out the Currie Glades area. I actually wasn't too impressed with the Currie Bowl. In the state we found it, it was generally tracked out and/or windblown. It also didn't seem to have quite the lines that some of the others (Lizard, Cedar) did. It was still great skiing of course; I'll just have to check it out again sometime to find more of its secrets. In the lower areas of the Currie Bowl, most of us ended up heading into the trees to the skier's left; even the brushy areas were tracked out pretty well. The trees were OK, although more coverage would have made them better.

That night it was dinner at home (steak on the grill, salad etc.) with some Xbox and hot tub. If it wasn't for Foosball, I don't know if I'd ever have wanted to head into town. Dinner and Xbox at home was all I needed!

If you'd like to get a local's perspective on the ski day, check out Heinz's report for February 19th, 2003 from the unofficial Fernie Page.