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28.02.2008
Destination Fernie
Four amazing days of skiing in the RockiesOn the 19th group of 36 Miles Mac students accompanied by four teachers head on a 16 hours drive to Fernie. We left around four and our arrival was expected at 8 to Fernie
Suprisingly nobody was late and thus no one paid for making the bus late. Several interesting happened on our way. First of all, one of the students decided to go back because she was feeling really sick. Secondly, it was freaking cold on the bus when were crossing Saskatchewan. It later turned out that the bus was made in Mexiko, so the engineers probably didn't thought that the outside temperature might be -40. Therefore, almost everybody was wearing hats and jackets. I guess it make some people feel closer to one another :). Finally, I decided to sleep in the aisle which turned out to be a good decision. When I covered the little blue emergency light shining right into my face with a glove, everything was OK. It was also a good idea to sit in the front – we can have a conversation with our cool track coach, no one stepped on my face while going to washroom which was situated in the back of the bus and we didn't have to wait in order to get off the bus.
At around seven in the moorning we saw the mountains. It was such a nice change. I've never seen mountains for so long. They look kind of the Alps in Austria – flat valleys with couple of small towns and villages with mountains rowering straight from it. Mountaint tops are not so high in this area – about 2200m the highest ones. However, there are lots of trees – not only pines, but lots of cedars and spruces. Furthermore, the trees are tall with short branches which make them look like green towers.
Since Fernie is well known for its powder days we hoped we would get a snow strom. Unfortunately, no one came, so we ended up with the second best weather – sunny with blue sky and temperatures around zero. The snow layer is really thick there – about 3.5 m.
Fernie has lots of ski runs of all difficulties – there are green, blue, black diamond and double black diamond runs. Green signifies an easy run whereas double black diamond is the hardest. There are five bowls (kotel, kotlina, "udoli") and one can ski anywhere one wants. Thus we did lots of skiing in between the trees. It was lots of fun. We also came across powder, but we had to hike for it, though. Oh wait – I skied in powder once more. However, I didn't expect it, so the tips of my skiis got stuck and I ended up hugging a small tree.
I rented ski for the trip. They were only 160 com long, but it was great skiing – sou easy to turn in the moggles and I really enjoyed carving on groomed runs.
I liked the way the skiing was organized. We could ski wherever we wanted as long as we stayed in groups. We started to ski when the lifts opened and finished when they closed (9 till 4)
We've got several interesting experiences during skiing. First of all, a friend of ours showed us how the ski a double black diamond – he fell at the top and slid down nearly 100m in a snowball. We can only see snow everywhere and his ski going along. Suprisingly, he somehow managed not to lose the other one. Secondly, we were traversing to get to a different free run we we came across a rope. It was definitely not there because of avalanche warning and the run was open at the top, so we decided to continue. Here I have to say, that we were there with one of our teachers. However, when we crossed the rope we heard a voice: "Where are you guys going. There will be held a free skiing competition, so you have about 30 minutes to ski down. However, there might be people jumping and doing stuff like that. Just telling you this for your own safety – we don't want any injuries." Alright, we decided to go back and ski a different run. Those profis are crazy – we saw a guy jumping and recovering immediately. It looked as though there were no trees and rocks in his way. Thirdly, there is a tree from which underwear hangs. It turned out that there are signitures of people on it. Thus we also bought panties, signed them and left them there. Finally, we had two injuries. A chair hit one of the snowboarders to his hit. He was OK, but an interesting big red spot appeared on his hat. By coincidence, he wasn't wearing his helmet on that day. In addition, a girl broke his wrist. He was boarding just on a green run and her fall didn't look bad, though. Maybe that's why she got injured.
After skiing we spent lots of time in a hot tub. However, it was impossible to jump to the snow after, since it was pretty hard there. We slept in rooms of four. There were two double beds, so guess how we ended up sleeping. My Canadian friens ordered an extra bed and one of them decided to sleep on the floor. The idea was to alternate. However, he changed his mind soon and chose to sleep in a bed. Crazy. I didn't complained, though, beacause I had a whole bed just for myself. The Canadians also went to change their clothes to the washroom, so no one could accidently see their private parts. That's such a difference in comparison to my country. The night policy was to be in bed by eleven. Then the teachers taped the door and they claimed they would send home anybody whose tape would be broken in the moorning. Here in Canada I bet they would do it.
By the way, did you know on which character is James Bond based on? One of the teachers said that the Ian Flemming met a guy from Winnipeg who was a spy during the First World War and based James Bond on him. This means, James Bond should be from Winnipeg.
We had been to the "Downtown" once – it's in fact only one street with shops. Basically, all the ski equipment is sold there for at least twice the price as usual, but it's not suprising. There is also a store with chocalate – they make it on the spot and you can buy here all the shapes
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