Here's to 2006!

Happy New Year to all our blog readers out there, wherever you may be. The start of 2006 brought more snow, more people and more partying our way in Fernie as the town filled up with so many new faces, and the mountain had 6,400 people skiing in one day - a new record. (We had to queue for a chairlift for 15 minutes. MOST unheard of around these parts!)

New Year's was a blast, as we now have our buddy Dave staying with us, all the way from Wimbledon. He arrived on the 29th, but his snowboard did not. Zoom airlines have played a blinder and left his board back at Gatwick, so he's been scrounging pants, socks, snowboards and everything else off us, not that we mind in the slightest. It's just a good job we have a lot of spare kit here. Not the best way to start his two week holiday, but he seems to be grinning and bearing it thus far.

We also had two friends from Edmonton staying for the weekend so the Lodge was up to capacity for the first time, which was great. Alistair and Chris drove here in their super big trucks and showed us all how it's done by doing some offroading up the mountain and making big snowballs and throwing them at us. Thanks boys! (The girls of Fernie were particularly sad to see gentle giant Chris go, as he kept getting up stupidly early every day and driving them to work at 7am, bless him.)

As for the actual night of New Year's Eve, we went to a fantastic house party that our friends at The Green Machine had. (We call their house The Green Machine as it's.... well... green.) All the pubs in town were charging $30-$60 to get in, so most people didn't really want to pay that much, hence our lovely friends threw a party, hoping that everyone in Fernie wouldn't turn up and trash the place. Well, everyone in Fernie did show up, including the RCMP - Royal Canadian Mounted Police - (who were very nice, but told us to stop having a firework display on the road outside) but the house pretty much survived the onslaught, thankfully. Although most of us had to work the next day, we partied until the wee small hours and much alcohol was imbibed, so it was a great night all round.

Now that the Christmas and New Year celebrations are over, the mountain and the town will quieten down again over the next few weeks. Most Canadians have to go back to work on the 2nd January and the schools go back too. I for one cannot wait for things to get slow again. The rentals section in Fernie Sports has been crazy and if I had a dime for every set of skis or boards that I've worked on and rented out in the past two weeks I'd be a very rich woman. The first customers come in at 7.45am (when it's still DARK!) and the last customers leave at about 6pm so it's a very long day. I almost forget that cranking bindings and carting around skis, boards and boots is quite a physical job so I get quite pooped by the end of a ten hour shift, but I'm still loving the work and the people.

We have a nice chilled week ahead of us to spend some quality time with Dave, plus we have Jenn and Steve from the powderroom.net who have come to stay up on the mountain with their kids so we'll be doing a pot luck dinner with them one night too. We went riding with them today while the kids were in ski school and we had a great time. The only downer was that Jethro went into a tree and hurt his leg - no panic, it's just very sore and the bruising is going to be gnarly! He got a free skidoo ride down the mountain from ski patrol which made up for it, and is now sitting on the sofa devouring a proper cheese sandwich (Dave brought us chocolate and English cheddar. Yay!)

In other news (and this is mostly for the snowboarders that read this blog like Kat and Lucie) I did my first rail! It was pretty scary, and I fell off the end and now have a purple bruise on my thigh, but I did it! And I liked it so much I did another one! Pictures soon!

Dave settles into Snow Valley Lodge just fine!


Beans, Hammo and Sarah say cheeeeeeeeeeeese