Yep, another Mountain Park Adventures trip away. This time to Castle Mountain and then on to Fernie (overnight in Fernie). I didn't do piccies at Castle because I've been there before and well, Fernie looked pretty much like this.
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Castle was it's usual excellent self - althought the T-bar was out, so the lines elsewhere were a bit long. However, the slopes were empty. There was plenty of new powder, so got knee deep in it here and there. I did some spectacular falling too - at one point, both skis, despite ski brakes, went shooting down the mountain. Fortunately, Martin was there to catch them (both) otherwise I'd probably still be chasing them now.
Once out of Castle, we headed over to Fernie (past "the largest dump truck in the world" - sorry, my camera was on the roof of the van, so I didn't get any piccies). Fernie's a pretty small place - all the directions we got were "just go two blocks down there". We had an evening of problems though - crap service in the restaurant, no bars that would let us in, etc etc. I'm not sure how long I could stay in Fernie before it sent me mad (too much the city boy, I think).
Fernie mountain was incredible - they were reporting 4cms of new snow, but it was more like 10-15cms. It snowed just about all day, although it rained at the bottom in the afternoon (which meant we all got absolutely soaked). The powder was great though - really special. Well worth a visit, but don't stay too long ;-)
While we were there, they were doing their annual Dummy Downhill. Essentially, people put skis on a box, stick a dummy to it and push it down hill. They get judged on how well it slides and makes a jump at the bottom (of the half pipe). In genius style, Wylie Coyote, on a rocket, zipped down the slope, over the jump, landed very well, but also hopped over the snow-wall at the bottom (designed to stop runaways). He went on to knock some guy over (who's day abruptly ended there, I would imagine). Nice.
Oh, on the way home we nipped past Radium Hot Springs - nice, although the hot spring is actually a swimming pool. It's kind of a shame they didn't just leave it as rock pools.