Well we finally got some more powder on Thursday, and some more on Friday. Tom had pinched a nerve in his shoulder so he took the day off on Thursday, so I stuck the iPod in and went riding alone. I bumped into Anouk after a while and she invited me to ride with her NonStop AMP group, so I spent the rest of the day with them.

The AMP is the course I would have done if I’d decided to stay after completing my Level 1 Instructor exam. It’s a pure rider improvement course with no teaching involved. The emphasis is on free-riding: jumps, spins, trees and drop-ins. Riding around with them was fun, and inspired me to start throwing myself around the mountain a bit, so I was pretty happy when it paid off and I did a nice 180 jump and stomped the landing. Not a whole lot of air, but that’s not too important at this stage – doing a spin without wiping out is!

Well it’s been a while since I wrote. Having too much fun snowboarding I suppose. After driving the Icefield Parkway we made it to Jasper and headed up to Marmot Basin for a couple of days riding. The resort turned out to be a bit disappointing and we’d done all the interesting stuff in less than a day. We took it easy for the other two days and just messed around as we knew we were heading back to Kicking Horse anyway.

Kicking Horse was just as awesome the second time around. We got 12cm of snow overnight after our first day there, so myself and Tom got to do all the stuff we’d missed out on the first time. We rode more ridges and spent a lot more time in the Feuz Bowl which had great snow and nice steep ridges which weren’t mogulled up.

We attempted to book snowmobiling in Revelstoke, but it was booked solid, so we decided to head back to Fernie for a week since we’d heard they’d had a metre of snow in the last few days. We arrived on Saturday only to find that the temperature had risen significantly and the lower slopes were turning to mush. Sunday was OK, but nothing special, so I took Monday and Tuesday off as my legs were itching for a break after the steeps and moguls of Kicking Horse….

Today was casual day in the office. Here’s me ;-)

Phase 4 of the trip began yesterday. Myself and Tom bid Paul farewell as he headed back to The Real World ™, then hit the road ourselves on our way to Jasper for a couple of days riding Marmot Basin.

The drive from Banff to Jasper goes through Banff National Park and Jasper National Park and runs right along the continental divide, so there’s mountains all around. It also passes the Columbia Icefield on the way, which gives the road its name. The information and tour centre was closed for winter, but you could still see some glaciers from the road. You’re supposed to be able to walk right up to one of the glaciers, but snow obliterated the trail, it was bloody freezing and there was no-one around, so I settled for taking pictures from the road. The scenery is spectacular along the whole 220km route, so while Tom drove I took loads of photos ;-)

[Photos]

Arriving in Banff was a bit of a shock to the system after living in small towns for the last few months. Banff isn’t a large town, but it is a massive tourist destination, so it’s very busy and full of shops trying to sell you all sorts of tourist shite. That took a bit of getting used to after the slow pace of the last couple of months. I’d previously got the same feeling arriving in Queenstown from Wanaka. We settled in quickly enough, helped by finding an excellent restaurant specialising in Asian food, where I had a great Green Chicken Curry that actually had some spice in it (spicy food being a bit of a novelty in Canada it seems)!

We spent our first day riding Sunshine Village which wasn’t too bad. They’d had a dump of snow overnight, so there was powder around, but that was offset by the fact that it was bloody windy, so you’d be riding through nice powder only to come to a windblown patch which was rock hard. Also, sitting on the chair lifts wasn’t pleasant!

The next two days were in the famous Lake Louise which was pretty good. There was plenty of varied terrain to keep us occupied and the snow cover was good too. Paul’s snowboarding book noted that Lake Louise was a great place to learn to ride park, but when we went looking for it we soon found out that the beginner park wasn’t there this season. I guess I’ll have to wait until Whistler then – gives me time to practice my switch riding!

I’m in Kicking Horse now and having a great time. It’s an awesome resort, with a huge range of terrain and lots of vertical. Check out the ridges! Especially Aerial #2.

We got a large dump of snow on Thursday, so Friday was an excellent powder day. We took the helmet-cam out for the first time and got some decent footage, so I’ll edit some of that and stick it up here.

Last night saw us heading up to the Eagle’s Eye restaurant at the top of the resort, 2350m up. We got the gondola up, had a great meal and noticed snow being blown around. By the time we were leaving, the wind was gusting up to 80km/h and the gondola ride took 50mins to get us back to base as it kept having to slow down, or stop, depending on wind speed. Swinging in a stopped gondola in an 80km/h wind is a fun experience ;-)

Apart from that, it’s just more and more snowboarding. We leave here tomorrow and head to Banff, then Marmot Basin and then I think we’ll come back here for a couple of days. It’s that good!

Sean and Paul have arrived and the road trip part of the holiday has begun. We left Fernie on Thursday, headed for Rossland and four days in Red Mountain. We stopped in Cranbrook to get ourselves set up with Canadian mobile numbers, as it was the first town we got to that had a Rogers shop, and they’re the only telecom operator in Canada who sell SIM cards. All the others force you to buy a phone, which I sure as hell wasn’t paying for.

After getting that sorted out, we continued skirting the U.S. border, in one case a little too literally. We missed a turnoff, and 10km later found ourselves about to drive across the border. Given that myself and Dave want nothing to do with U.S. Immigration bureaucracy, we decided we should turn back right about the time we saw a sign that said ‘this way back to Canada’, so we duly took that turn and prepared to head back to our missed turn.

Unfortunately as soon as we made the turn a siren went off and a Canadian customs officer came running out of a building. We decided that pulling over would be a smart move and prepared for some questions:

Officer: Where are you going?

Us: Rossland.

O: Where have you come from?

U: Fernie.

O: Do you live there?

U: No, we’re foreigners.

O: So you’ve an excuse for being lost…

U: Yes.

After a cursory glance at some ID we were out of there with directions to the turnoff we should have taken, while remarking that if it had been U.S. Customs we probably would have either been shot, or at the very least had all our luggage searched!

It was pretty plain sailing after that, though the scenery was pretty spectacular, and we’re now settled in to our place in Red Mountain. We went for our first runs today, and while more snow is definitely required, it’s a pretty nice mountain.

Jacqui headed back to LA yesterday. She enjoyed her couple of days in Fernie, especially as she has never seen so much snow in one place. She wasn’t interested in coming up the hill to ski or snowboard, but decided that we should do some cross-country skiing instead – we booked a day trip out to Island Lake.

Got to their car park at 9am, to be picked up by a snow cat for the 30min trip to the lodge. Once there we were kitted out with boots & skis and taken on a 90min trip around the lake, on a nice, easy, tracked, cross-country trail. Since neither of us can ski, and we’d each only attempted cross-country once before, we both fell over a couple of times, usually when there was a bend after a downhill. Jacqui ended up with a pretty impressive bruise on her arse!

Once the exercise was over, we were treated to a gourmet lunch in the lodge, followed by another snow cat journey to complete the day.

Since it was also the last day of our course, we all headed out to dinner with our instructors, Anouk and Shaun, and with all the ski instructors too. After that it was off to the Northern to see The Finagli Brothers (Lewi & Dicko) play for an hour or two, which was a great laugh!

Island Lake Photos

Fernie Photos

A couple of weeks ago, we spent a day touring outside Fernie in the company of local expert Ken and National Geographc wildlife photographer Terry, having various types of deer pointed out to us. Obviously all the local bears are in hibernation, so we didn’t see any of them, and we also didn’t see any cougar or mountain lions, but that was to be expected.

We travelled beside the Koocanusa Reservoir, a 95 mile long lake split equally between BC and Montana. The water level in the lake is extremely low at this time of year, and frozen too, so we stopped for some photos right on the edge of the border with the U.S.

Check out the photos.

The exams are over and I passed: I’m now a Level 1 CASI snowboard instructor! It sounds very grand, but in reality it only qualifies me to teach absolute beginners until they get to linking turns on green slopes ;-)

We’re almost finished here in Fernie. Jacqui arrives for a four day visit on Saturday, then Paul & Sean arrive on Wednesday and we hit the road to Red Mountain on Thursday.

Unfortunately Paul seems to have done his back in and my have to pull out of the trip. Hopefully not, so fingers crossed for the next few days.