Adrian Slade's Blog

Thought some of you might like to know about Fernie, this is one special ski resort. We have been going to it for the past 7 years and some others as well, so we can compare. Fernie is just great, when it snows there is snow and is usually fine dry powder, in 2007 in 7 days we saw over 6 foot of it and that was at the base, the average a year is 29 foot and in 2008 it hit over 38 feet. We were there for 45 days and I skied 37 of them, had to have a few days rest. What is great about Fernie is that it is a reasonable size slightly smaller than Blackcomb Mtn at Whistler, and it does not get crowded, even at weekends you can find runs to yourself. At Christmas and the peak Febuary time you can see lift queues but usually only 5 mins or so, and still loads of room on the hill. In the week it is quite common to see lifts empty. To compare Fernie is 2500 acres and peaks at around 7500 on the hill and Balckcomb(Whistler) is around 2800 acres and averages over 20000 people a day, this speaks for itself. The hill is made up of 5 bowls all quite different, the terrain and runs are very varied offering anything you can get elsewhere.

Fernie is advertised as "Steep and Deep", this is true to an extent, but really only applies to the upper third of the mountain, and even then there are some green and plenty of blue runs for the less experienced skiers and boarders. Having said that there are some fantastic steep runs and open tree areas. Timber bowl and Currie are superb, with some great steeps off the ridges. For all round sking Fernie is pretty good for families and I would say about two thirds of it is accessable to an intermediate skier/boarder, the lower thrid is great for beginners with lots of greens and a few easy blues.

The town is very laid back and extremely friendly, a little quiet for some maybe but that is part of its character. For younger people there are several popular bars with music and so on, so it does have some night life. There are loads of resturants offering all sorts of food, from the very cheap to expensive, so you have plenty to choose from.

The negatives, well there are lifts that are a bit slow, Elk, Deer and Boomerang, but not terrible. The ski base could do with a couple of more resturants. Currently Kelsey's Bar, Lizard Creek Lodge, and Gabriella's offer food in the day and evening. The RCR Day Lodge and The Lost Boys Cafe(top of Timberline chair) offer food in the day as well.

So all in all a great and hard to beat ski hill, if your interested then search for skifernie, you'll find loads of info and videos.

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