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How to guarantee snow in Fernie: book a car for a day trip to Castle Mountain.
We both went to ski camp this week and both improved our skiing significantly. We also made a few predictions about our planned trip to Castle Mountain. "It's definitely going to snow in Fernie on Thursday", we both told our instructors.
Sure enough, our predictions came true. We rose early this morning to discover that it had snowed overnight. And it was still snowing as we drove up to Fernie to pick up our skis. We fervently hoped that Castle was getting the same dump.
The snowfall eased not long into the drive. Another of our predictions came true; Castle had got very little snow overnight!
Despite the lack of snow I quite enjoyed Castle. It forced me out of my comfort zone and turned out to be a breakthrough day for me. We know Fernie so well now its very easy to just stick to what you know, enjoying the skiing, but coming away from the mountain each day unchallenged.
I can proudly say I've now done my very first double black diamond without side-slipping or coasting down on my bum! I also hit a tree run for the first time. It had the best snow on the mountain so it made sense for us to spend most of our time there. Skiing in trees is quite a challenge, but mostly mentally. If you can get over the whole obstacles on the piste thing it can actually be quite fun. As our friend Adrian puts it, "look between the trees, not at them, otherwise you'll crash into them!".
On the way back from Castle we stopped at Frank Slide. Back in 1903 in the early hours of an April morning, a wedge of limestone 1km wide, 425m long and 150m deep came crashing down into the valley, wiping out the town of Frank and most of the sleeping residents. The highway goes straight through the middle of the slide. As we drove along my brain struggled to comprehend the magnitude of the event. There was rubble in every direction in huge chunks, bigger than most family sized cars. Only a small number of townsfolk survived and most of these were miners on the night shift who had to dig their way out of the mine once the rubble subsided. Makes you realise how small you really are.
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