It's Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiistmaaaaaaaaaaaaaas!

Noddy Holder's got nothin' on me!

We just noticed that our UK clock in the kitchen was reading 2am GMT, so we thought we'd better post an early Merry Christmas to everyone in the UK that reads this blog.

Rest assured we are fully prepared for the festivities tomorrow. The turkey is defrosted, the veggies are chopped, the roast potatoes have been parboiled and the booze has been purchased.

We're heading up the mountain for a snowboard at 8.30am tomorrow, then coming back for christmas lunch at about 1pm, then opening presents, then getting tipsy... then probably eating more. We've made christmas cake and mince pies so the cupboards are hardly bare.

The one downer is the weather. Far from having a LOT of snow these past few days, it's been nice weather for ducks...ie raining heavily. This isn't so bad at the top of the mountain as the rain has turned to snow, but the base is looking sketchy and it's a balmy 5 degrees in town with no snow anywhere. I was dreaming of a white christmas, but now I realise it's going to be just like home!

Merry Christmas everyone!

BBQs and Birthdays

Most of you know that it is Jethro's 29th birthday today, so I hope that lots of birthday wishes appear below this post, even if it's almost the 20th back in the UK!

He was very happy to be able to go out snowboarding on his big day, even if it was minus 28 on the mountain. Yes, you read that right. It's sunny and it's minus 28! This country is crazy! I thought I could handle that kind of cold by wearing about six layers on my top half, but whilst I was toasty warm everywhere else, my little tootsies were utterly frozen so I had to go inside after two runs to warm them up in front of the fire in the Slopeside Coffee shop. There are frostbite posters up everywhere. Apparently you are supposed to warm up your affected areas slowly and do NOT rub them! So I did the exact opposite! But never mind... after the initial pain of having all the blood return to my feet, they suddenly got warm again so all was well.

We really want some more snow. Don't get me wrong, the mountain is great and there is a good covering of white everywhere, but I want the temperatures to get slightly more bearable and have a bit of a proper white christmas. Apparently there's a big storm moving in from Wednesday so we may be in luck. Fingers and frostbitten toes crossed!

We had a winter BBQ the other night, as a means to invite a few friends over and to welcome Danni, Baden, Ally and Sarah to the house. We have a wonderful - and huge - gas barbecue that lives in the SVL garage but cooking meat at minus 20 needs some serious dedication. Although the BBQ started off warm enough and was cooking well, the dropping temperatures defeated it eventually so we had to move things inside and finish off in the kitchen! Never mind. Everyone got a sausage in the end and some of our baking friends brought some excellent cakes over too.

Jethro is now happily heading over to Tim Hortons to use his special birthday mug that I bought for him - it comes with a free coffee and he's a bit of a Timmy Ho addict. (For those who don't know, Tim Horton's is a huge coffee chain over here and every Canadian starts his or her working day with a visit to Tims). He also got a nice pair of mitts from me to keep his fingers warm - they're working well apparently, having been tested to the max this morning! And he was also wearing his new thermals that his family sent over from the UK so he's as warm as warm can be.

We're going "oot on the toon" tonight to celebrate with some friends, so I hope he'll be in a fit state to say something witty and amusing on the blog tomorrow. Or maybe not.

The winter BBQ festivities inside the warmth of the basement, where everybody was herded.


No glasses were broken in the making of this party. Everyone behaved impeccably, you'll be glad to hear. We're very lucky to have made some non-crazy friends!


New housemate Ally waves for the camera!


Housemates Baden, Danni, Sarah and non-housemate Simon compare notes on how to chargrill your sausages beyond recognition...


Baden offically makes the best home-made burgers in the World!


Hammo, Sarah, Lisa, Mike, Alex and Marshall (tallest man in Fernie) grin inanely for the camera


Jethro wakes up early to open his presents


It's my birthday!!!!!!

Did someone mention a small brown furry thing that answers to the name of "Choccy"?

Yes, dear readers, for those of you who have been missing the moose, he's made a comeback. Having filled out a bit, he's now back to his usual shape and in great form (the great snowboard squishing incident of October 2005 is but a mere memory). So much so, that we decided to take him up the mountain for some snowboarding action.

So how do you take a moose up a mountain? Well, you employ a tactic known as plagiarism and copy what your friends did a few seasons ago with their toy tiger... you attach him to your goggle strap! (Sorry to Wendy, Lucie and Tina for the blatant borrowing of furry-toy-up-mountain techinigue!)

What with the weather being so clear and the skies being blue, Choccy informs me that he loved every second of our jaunt today. Although he found the chairlifts a tad high, the feeling of the wind whipping through his fur was more than enough to compensate. And he almost let me forget that I stacked it big time at the bottom and buried him in a load of snow... sorry Choccy.

In other news, Jethro got back on his skis - video below. (Apart from whinging for a good ten minutes about how bloomin' uncomfortable the hard boots were and complaining about having more to carry than usual, he couldn't disguise the little grin on his face when he cruised down the runs we did today, looking like he had been skiing for more than the five hours or so he has dedicated to it). Most of our party were astounded when I told them how little time he had spent on two planks. HIgh praise indeed.

I can't wait to get hold of a pair of ski boots from work as I can share Jethro's skis, what with us being roughly the same height. I now know how to change all the settings on a ski binding and the intricacies of how they work, due to my training at Fernie Sports. Conditions are perfect for skiing the groomed runs, what with the sun shining and the snow being hard packed. We could really do with some more snow, but you know what they say: A bad season in Canada is waaaaay better than a good season in Europe, so I aint complaining.

When we're not out on the snow, I am mostly working (as we're getting busier, but I don't have to work on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day - yay!) and we're also out socialising. We went to our first Pot Luck Dinner the other night. This is a very Canadian thing and my friend Nicky told me all about it back in London. Everyone takes one dish, either sweet or savoury, to the party and it's pot luck as to what you end up with! Genius! About 12 of us trooped over to Lisa, Simon, Gerry and Mins house and all took various dishes of stuff. We ended up with a good spread - home-made soup, salad, bread, pizza, dippy things, blueberry pie, muffins, noodles, veggie pasta, fried potatoes and a rice thingy. All very nice! I highly recommend that we bring this idea over to the UK. It saves the host a fortune in food shopping for a start!

Alex and Choocy reach new heights


Choccy eavesdrops on a top secret recipe swap between Alex and Lisa (Lisa is one of the best cooks we know - seriously!)


Choccy continues his stealth mission on the Elk Chair as Alex and Lisa natter on


Jethro and his incredible natural talent for skiing...

Jingle bells!

Christmas is well and truly on it's way here in Fernie, and the tourists arrived in their droves this weekend. Fernie mountain opened on Saturday and it was a fantastic day - the sun shone, the snow was deep and crisp and even, and nobody pushed in front of me in the lift line... a revelation! I stacked it three of four times, but I keep being told that it's good to fall. Tell that to my aching limbs!

But what a change from our usually empty mountain! Three of the car parks were full by 8.30am and the lifts didn't open until 9am! Regrettably, we were dumb enough to forget our camera in the rush to fill the van with bodies and zoom up there for first lifts so you'll have to take our word for it!

There were queues of people at the Timber Bowl Express chair - about 100 or so gathered. By the time we'd sorted out passes and meandered over to the Elk Quad chair they had started to run it, and we queued for about...um.... three minutes in all. It's a travesty, I tells ya! ;-) And within about 9.10am, everyone had dispersed to different areas of the mountain and it was hardly busy at all. If this is what they call "Fernie Busy" then I will be a very happy bunny for the rest of the season:

We could still do with a bit more snow, particularly as the mountain has been scarred up this weekend and there probably isn't a stingle stash of white fluffy stuff left anywhere. It's pretty hard in the mornings - a tad icy - but when the sun shines and it softens up, it's still pretty good. We're due for a dump (of snow - stop sniggering at the back) this coming week, so fingers crossed.

Our first guests arrived at the Lodge this morning, so we're in the process of settling them in. We've got more arriving on the 15th, and then a full house for New Year's Eve. Yay!

I had to work today (all alone, snivel) but I told myself that I MUST get around to doing a blog as I've been pretty slack lately and I can't leave Jethro to do everything! Work is still great, but we are getting noticeably busier. I had my first lot of ski and snowboard rentals this week, and I put $239.99 on someone's credit card when I meant to put $23.99 on it. DOH! Nice one Alex. But owing to the miracles of modern technology, I managed to refund the credit card so all was well in the end and the customer was very nice about it.

Finally, I wanted to introduce you all to our new friends: Basement tree and Lounge tree! These are our newly "acquired", shall we say, Christmas trees that are now sitting pretty in the Lodge. I must admit that we did chop them down ourselves, but we have been assured that this is perfectly acceptable and that everyone in Fernie does the same. I can't imagine why anyone would spend $30 buying a tree when we are surrounded by thousands of the things, but I guess some people are odd! We gave them a good shake before tossing them on the roof rack, just to make sure we weren't bringing any unwanted critters home too!

And I think you'll agree that they look rather nice:

Basement tree. He's not wonky! Just interesting!


Lounge tree. A little more sophisticated, and bearing presents!


(You may be wondering why we have two trees? Tis simple, dear readers. We divide our time between the basement and the lounge, so we need to have the spirit of crimble time in both, naturally!)

The novelty of a chairlift

We've had a bit more snow lately, so we decided that it might be a good idea to take a daytrip to Big Mountain in Montana - a two hour drive from Fernie across the border. I've always wanted to go to Montana so I was doubly excited!

Big Mountain is a substantial resort seven miles out of Whitefish, where Jethro and the boys went a few weeks ago to do some shopping (see previous blog). But we heard that it had opened at the weekend and when a resort opens that means that the chairlifts start running and you no longer have to cough up a lung to get a five minute ski or board back down the hill!

We got a little team together for the trip, which consisted of Hammo, Tony, Matt, Peta and Sarah and everyone pitched up at Snow Valley Lodge at 7.15am for the journey ahead. Matt brought enough crisps to sink a battle ship as his housemate works for Dorito's so they get gallons of free crisps every week... nice! Once we'd crammed the van full of kit and tied the skis and boards to the roof rack, we set off in the dark and made for the US Border, which is only 30 minutes away.

By the time we got there, the snow was falling heavily - large flakes this time - and it was pretty cold. The US border is a barren and depressing place anyway - lots of odd pictures of fish, bear and George Bush and Dick Cheney looking down on you as you have your fingerprints and photograph taken. At least our boarder official was a nice chap called Steffy who wished us well.

It's an odd thing, but as soon as you get into Montana the land gets flatter and they don't seem to agree with gritting or clearing the roads, so it was a bit of a dicey journey down to the resort. Jethro and I were a little worried about the drive back in dark but soon forgot all about that as the excitment started to build as we got nearer and the snow got heavier.

We arrived in Whitefish, which is a lot prettier than I expected, and made our way up the winding road to the resort base. Luckily we were behind a delivery truck so that made some nice treads in the road for us to follow carefully as we passed some beautiful cabins. One was for sale and I was sorely tempted... we wondered if it would be achieveable if we all chipped in! They seem to have a better idea of Alpine design in the US. Fernie lacks some of the charm that a resort in say, Switzerland, would have, but Big Mountain is a bit different.

We parked up and got all our kit on, Matt having stripped down to his boxers in the back of the van (much to Sarah and Peta's dismay!) and bounced out, suited and booted and raring to go the minute we stopped. Having purchased our bargainous lift tickets for the day ($25 US) we made our way to the chairlift and sat back on the cold metal like it was some kind of luxurious sofa - the novelty of riding a chairlift up to the top of the mountain was wonderful! Peta and I remarked to each other that the first lift up took about five minutes and would have been a half-day hike at the very least in Fernie!

Although the cloud cover was pretty low with the snow falling, I could get an appreciation of just how big Big Mountain is - guess it lives up to it's name. Only 12 runs were open for the day as they were still clearing and snow-canonning other areas but that was more than enough to play on. All the runs were tree lined with lovely wide open pistes - just perfect. The trees keeps the temperature bearable and the wind out. It's only when you sit on a chairlift for five minutes that you freeze!

There was enough to keep everyone busy - cliff drops, tree runs and a temporary terrain park for the more advanced among us and cruisey blues for those who were just enjoying being back on a board again without being knackered from a large hike! (ie: me!) We all challenged ourselves without any injuries, which makes the perfect day out in my opinion and didn't even stop for lunch or a drink - four hours of solid riding with maybe a cheeky mars bar on the chair.

As the lifts started to close at 3.30pm and I started to get too cold to enjoy myself, we called it a day and made the long, narrow run down to the base. Narrow runs are all well and good but they do make for a bit of calf and thigh burn on a snowboard as you have to keep and edge and can't turn from side to side. By the bottom I was ready to collapse so I did. Plus I was chilled to the bone so my chin and nose went purple - not a good look. It took me an hour to warm back up again - the moral of the story is that I need to wear more layers.

We drove back down to Whitefish as darkness fell and went for a hot bite to eat. It became apparent that the US is MUCH cheaper than Canada. We got a pitcher of beer and a pizza for $8 (US). A lone pitcher without pizza costs twice that in Fernie. Warming up and eating excellent pizza in a saloon bar, we met a great local who invited us to a party to hear him DJ with his didgeridoo. Because of the long drive back, we had to decline but we all agreed to come back and stay the night another time.

They sell beer in the petrol stations in the US - an odd concept I realise - so the guys in the back brought some booze and settled in for the long journey home while Jethro and I sat at the front and tried not to think about the layers of snow and ice underneath the van, as we journeyed through the dark. Jethro drove all the way back and I have to say he played a blinder. We left at about 6.30pm and got back to Fernie at 8pm, having had no major misshaps, even though it was an unpleasant journey with the terrible weather conditions.

It was well worth it - Big Mountain is definitely a place that we will go back to.


On the road to Montana.


Sarah, Hammo, Jethro, Alex and Peta. (From left to right)
Matt's not pictured as he was too busy boarding to have his picture taken.


Alex's hair was frozen solid.


There were some great views from the mountain.