Dude, Where's My Snowboard?: Yeeeeehaw! Montana bound once again...

On Wednesday, we decided to get the hell outta Dodge (or Fernie) and head over to the US of A again. Jethro needed to hand in his Green Card visa before the 11th Feb and we thought it was high time that we explored a bit further than Fernie city limits for once.

Last time we went to ski in Big Mountain, Montana, the drive took longer than expected and we had a blizzard to contend with on the drive there and back, so we vowed that next time we would stay the night. Well, we broke our vow and decided on another day trip, but this time the roads were completely clear on the way there, and whilst it snowed a little on the mountain during the day, the drive back was pretty uneventful and easy (plus we were rewarded with one of those big-sky-North-American sunsets that never cease to amaze me).

Big Mountain gets roughly the same weather patterns as Fernie does, so it hadn't snowed there for about three days, but the snow was soft and not too icy and for a moment we thought it might be sunny. No such luck... it started to snow and then by the afternoon the visibility was pretty much zero above a certain point. But this didn't hinder us in any way and we got to explore a lot more of the mountain (you may recall that on our last visit there were only two chairlifts open servicing 12 runs). This time, most of the mountain was open, bar one of the runs back down the base as it was being used for a Women's Super G downhill competition. This news pleased the boys no end, as there were buxom ladies walking around in tight lycra racesuits, and bless them, I think they were a little in awe...

We all stuck together, which was surprising, as we're all into different things and some of us are more "hardcore" than others, when it comes to skiing and snowboarding, but we all seemed to enjoy the meandering blue runs that were much wider and easier than what we're used to in Fernie. We made a schoolboy error in trying to find some powder through the trees and whilst some of us managed to find our way back to civilisation, Baden fell in a tree well and then hiked the wrong way, so there was a 30 minute period where we sat at the bottom of the chairlift and threw snowballs at each other before thinking that we should go and look for him. Not to worry... he was found safe and well by Hamish and Jethro, if a little puffed out from walking the wrong way for 20 minutes.

After a hearty lunch in one of the many restaurants on the mountain, we decided to take on a bowl called Hellroaring and a run called Hellfire... you know what's coming really don't you. It was hell. The only way I can describe this rather unpleasant and extremely long-winded, bumpy, uphill, downhill, flat catrack riddled run is like a boardercross course for giants... and most of the people who read this blog won't have a clue what boardercross is, so just take my word for it that it wasn't a whole lotta fun. It then transpired that we had to take a two-man chairlift to the top again, and it had no safety bar on it! Hilarious! There we were, dangling twenty feet over craggy rock faces, with only out wits to keep us from falling out... an experience I will not be repeating. It was so terrifying that we found Jesus. Quite literally, we turned a corner and found a statue of Jesus, hence all of us doubled up laughing and wondered who put a statue of The Lord on a ski slope! What was even funnier was the irate American businessman who was standing within a few feet of said statue with his mobile phone clamped to his ear, spitting obscenties down the phone to some poor unfortunate associate who had royally messed up an order of some sorts. Honestly... if you go skiing for the day, leave the phone at home.

We called it a day at about 4pm, when the visibility really was rubbish and trundled back to the van to drive into Whitefish, the nearest town. We wanted to take look at some of the snowboard shops and stumbled across this awesome store which was kind of cheap (everything is cheap to us if it doesn't get 14% tax whacked on top of it!) and then proceeded to run around the place like naughty schoolchildren whilst Sarah and Danni brough their own body weight in T-shirts. There was even a Paul Frank section, and those of you who know of my Paul Frank obsession will be astounded to hear that I walked away without a SINGLE purchase.

The call of the road beckoned (plus we had a lot of expensive kit in the roof rack and no locking device) so we headed back to the border, hiding the alcohol we had purchased (cheaper y'see) and wearing all the new clothes and ripping the tags off everything (otherwise they like to ask you politely to pay tax when you go into Canada y'see). Danni was convinced she had spied a Subway restaurant (they of the famous sandwich subs) in a town called Eureka (yes, that is it's real name) so we crawled through the place in the dark, thinking that she had been hallucinating with hunger... but she hadn't and we found it attached to a gas station so we all piled in and ordered humungous sarnies of epic proportion. Jethro then proceeded to get himself drummed out of town for pointing to a large stuffed Elk and asking "Is that Moose real?" Cue the gas station attendant giving him a funny look and saying "That there is an Elk, sonny." Needless to say, we left quite quickly after that.

Having thought that entering Canada through the border would be the usual breeze it is, we ended up with a bored customs officer who made us get out of the van and proceeded to ask us all in turn lots of jobsworth questions like "when did you enter the country, what is your purpose here, what is your job, when are you leaving, what's your favourite biscuit, do I look good in brown?" etc...

As I write this, I am sitting in the correctional facility in El Paso, having been extradited from Canada on the grounds of being a smartass... I am of course, jesting. He let us go eventually and we all made it back to Fernie in one piece. The End.

Driving through Eureka on the way to Big Mountain