After a week without snow, yesterday it returned with a vengeance. We awoke to 27cm of fresh overnight, and it just kept going, so this was the scene which greeted myself and Nathan this morning… 44cm overnight, for a total of 71cm in the last 48hrs. Best of all? It’s Monday, so no weekend crowds.

We made it up bright and early for fresh tracks, so I decided to hold my video camera for the first run, only to have it marred by a knobhead skier who decided to pull a hockey stop into my path, sending me flying. Before I’d stopped sliding he was abusing me in lots of colourful language, and when I pointed out that it was he who pulled the sudden swerve and stop into my path, he pointed out that he was stopping to wait for his young daughter. Nice anger management and vocabulary he was teaching her there!

Anyway, holding the camera sans glove wasn’t the smartest thing to do in -23C, so I’m still dealing with slight frostbite six hours later. The first few runs were pretty sketchy, as a couple of days ago I’d moved my bindings forward to a fully centered stance to make it easier to change back and forth between regular and switch. That change was haunting me on a monster powder day as the front of my board just wanted to dive under the snow, so when we decided to switch to the new side of the hill I dipped into rentals and moved them back. After that I was ripping through the powder, landing nice jumps off cat-tracks and all was well with the world.

I’ve only 5 days left here in Fernie before heading off to Kicking Horse to meet up with Tom, Dave & Rob, and shitloads of powder is the perfect send off!

I’m halfway through my snowboarding season, and, in stark contrast to opening day, we’ve had tonnes of snow here. When I arrived back after Christmas the resort looked just as it had last year, with plenty of snow around, and it just kept on coming. Powder day after powder day, sometimes with up to 45cm of light, champagne powder which is a joy to ride. Even last week we got a metre of new snow.

The fun times had to end at some stage, and the last couple of days have been snow-less. A little bit fell today, but it seems that we’ll have to wait until next week for some proper snow.

My riding has slowly been getting better and I can now ride switch properly down steep semi-groomed runs. Next step is to start riding switch in powder and see how that goes. I’m jumping a bit more too, though nothing huge, and have managed a few more 180s, so I’ll have to find somewhere on the hill where I can try a 360 without ricking too much injury if I screw it up.

We’ve got a good crew riding around this year. Myself, Nathan and Floody are up most days, Tom, Dave & Rob are around as well, and Dave & Aaron, who did the course with me last year are also here for two weeks. There’s plenty of others who show up now and again, depending on what days they’re working etc. so there’s always someone to go riding with.

Update: that ‘little bit’ had turned in to 27cm by this morning. Happy days!