surprised we arrived safely after an uncomfortable white knuckle ride. arrived at 9 in the morning at the train station and it was pretty stunning. looking around with mountains everywhere covered in snow and pretty little cabins all around. we had to get a taxi to the hostel as it didnt look much fun carrying our bags all that way. so met a guy named john who was also staying there and joined him in his taxi. driving up the road we found we were on the edge of town but the hostel was quite pretty in an alpine cabin. however we couldnt check in till 3 so we got rid of our bags and took a walk back in to town, playing in the snow and hoping that no bears would get us. in town we sat and warmed up with a cup of tea in starbucks, which is really complicated to get tea as they have no idea what a normal cup of tea is and i ended up with breakfast coffee!!! as i was buying the drinks ben got chatting with a woman who seemed to take a bit of a shine to him and offered to take him to get some sushi, when i plonked down on the seat next to him and gave him his drink she didnt look to pleased. the rest of the day was spent walking around the shops to see if we could get any cheap skiing gear as it was a bit cold. we went and stocked up on supplys and trudged back to the hostel to find our room. we were informed that we had been upgraded, wow but it wasnt that good all it meant was we had an ensuite to share with the others in our room. so we got in and dumped all our stuff then set down for a read where we fell asleep only to be woken up by a school group coming in and doing head stands everywhere. we had dinner and fell asleep in bed as we were knackered from our bus ride.

we had another chinese geek as a roomate who stayed up on his laptop and also had a cold so was sneezing everywhere and coughing which was really nice. so we got up and had breakfast and we packed some supplies as we were going walking up a snowy mountain today. it was a short walk to the path and we only had a map of the town to guide us up there, the road to walk along was covered in about 10cm of snow and wasnt used in winter, got to the base and were having thoughts as the path was pure ice, but then a man with nothing else but a cup of coffee started up the path and then we were passed by a lady jogging so we thought it cant be that bad and set off. walking up we got great views of the town and then at the top we got a nice view of the valley the other side of the town which was spectacular. deciding to sit down and have a drink we found that the camelbak had frozen up thinking that this was quite bad we had to warm the ice up in our hands so we could drink. got to the top and had a quick picture then had to walk back down as it got cold and we were hungry. managed not to slip over walking down the path and got to the road where ben decided to do some stunts on the ice but straight away he slipped over which was quite funny. walking back to the town the temperature had dropped a bit so we rushed in to starbucks to warm up. decided we couldnt be bothered to cook so dinner was on dad tonight and we ate ribs and chicken with chips which was really good and made a nice change to rice and pasta so thanks dad. got back to the hostel and played cards then bed. in the morning we were leaving for jasper.