Lots to write about, but it’s late and I’m pretty tired. We’ll see how far I get.

Well, Day 3 in Fernie (Thursday) was much better than the previous day. The weather clouded over and it started to snow. This was bad—harder to see the slopes and bumps, and indeed very foggy to make it worse—but very good in a lot of ways, as the snow had been getting hard and difficult to ski on. So now it was soft and great fun, especially in the relatively untracked deeps of Cedar Bowl. Ok, so I fell down a couple of times, but it was worth it!

So the next decision, with the snow continuing to fall, was whether or not I should stay in Fernie for another day. With the snow continuing to fall, I went to check with the hotel to see if I could stay in the room an extra night. Fortunately, the answer was… no. So I set off Friday (yesterday) morning in the pouring rain for Nelson, B.C.

Yes, it rained all day. The skiing would have been terrible.

Nelson is really beautiful, although I haven’t had much of a chance to explore it in daylight. But it’s set in the middle of the mountains by a beautiful lake, has an attractive downtown area with real shops (unlike, say, Fernie or Golden), and has a good bookstore and at least one great restaurant. And nice people, too. Of course, the rain made it less enticing, and the prospect of trying to ski the next day was unappealing giving the inevitable degredation of the snow quality.

Well, Friday morning dawned with a blizzard. After a nice breakfast at the hotel, I drove up to Whitewater resort. Or at least, that was the plan… The rental car, however, had insufficient traction to make the trip. I aborted at the turnoff from the highway and returned to Nelson. There, I parked the car and hitched a ride up to Whitewater.

The snow had been falling hard for most of the night and all of the morning, and it was deep on the ski hills. When I arrived they were still blasting off dynamite to prevent avalanches. Whitewater is really small, only two small chairs, but the weather had kept many of the normal weekend visitors away and the lineups were quite short. And once they opened up the bowl which had been closed for the morning… Well, it was fantastic. Light powder snow up over my knees, untracked… And just like that, Whitewater goes to the top of my list of places to come and ski at again.
posted by Tom at 11:46 PM | link |