Powder paradise
Record-breaking snows have been mounting up this winter in the Canadian Rockies. And while you could drive twice the distance to Banff and Jasper resorts, you can nab a lip-smacking taste of the action closer to home.
Like fine chocolate to a dessert connoisseur, more than 18 feet of snowfall so far this season is luring powder hounds to Fernie Alpine Resort.
Less well-known than its more northern cousins, at 250 miles from Spokane, Fernie gives the quickest big Canadian Rockies skiing for the least amount of car time. (While air travel to and from Canada now requires passports, you can still drive across the border with picture ID.)
With new high-speed lifts replacing steep T-bars over the past decade, Fernie has become an easier place to ski while gaining a fast reputation as one of the region’s best powder caches.
Every time we go to Fernie, we meet people. Ten years ago, my husband and I sat drinking cocoa mid-mountain at the Bear’s Den, heads tucked over the trail map trying to figure out how to navigate Cedar Bowl.
A nearby couple overheard our mumblings. Not only did they volunteer to become our tour guides, dropping us into fresh, thigh-deep powder stashes, but we ended up staying the night at their house.
Ten years later, despite the addition of million-dollar vacation homes, Fernie is still a friendly place. Lift operators, their speech tinted with a few Aussie and Kiwi accents, actually smile and ask about the skiing.
We arrived during an Arctic blast that sent fair-weather skiers scurrying for indoor fireplaces. But we couldn’t resist the bright sunshine and deep blue skies.
With no lift lines (which locals swear is the norm even in moderate temperatures) and 15 inches of few-day-old fluff, we weren’t about to let the icy thermometer bully us. Instead, we zipped into layer after layer until we could barely move.
The hill
At 2,800 vertical feet and 2,500 acres, Fernie plunges big groomed cruisers from five large, off-piste powder bowls along the Lizards, a ridge of limestone that looks like a stegosaurus spine. The trick is learning your way around the bowls.
Again, we lucked out. We met Robin Siggers, a veteran of 30-plus years at Fernie, mostly on ski patrol and as director of mountain operations.
“Snowfall and open glades are Fernie’s signature features,” he said, then laughed: “Hey, it’s the Jackson Hole of the North.”
As we rode the Great Bear Express Quad, he pointed with a heavily gloved hand to the resort’s two sides, divided by a rocky arm shooting down from Polar Peak.
“New schoolers” head to drops and shots in Siberia, Timber and Currie bowls, he explained. We were headed for Lizard and Cedar, where the old-timers go.
Riding up the lift, we ogled untouched powder – smooth, thick, pristine. Even though a couple of days had passed since the latest storm, some slopes sported only a few wavy tracks while others sat raw.
Pointing to Snake Ridge on Cedar Bowl’s north end, Siggers rattled off the stats: 1,200 vertical on a 38-degree pitch with a perfect fall line.
He told of skiing there in the 1970s when Fernie had only two lifts: “You’d hike out to Snake Ridge and leave your signature track,” he laughs.
Today, for us it’s a short ski traverse from the top of the Great Bear Express to shin-deep powder turns.
After we glided through the glades, the “other side of the tracks” called to us. The Timber Bowl Express Quad reaches three large basins with a side ride up the White Pass quad.
From the 6,316-foot-high summit of White Pass, skiers cruise the blues through Currie Bowl or creep along the Polar Peak ridge to black diamond chutes. The ski traverse weaves through dramatic rock outcroppings – evidence of geologic upheaval.
As I tiptoed my ski tips to the edge of Corner Pocket, a double-black that drops precarious, icy turns through a vertical slot, my stomach nearly lunged with vertigo before I could back up.
“No thanks,” I said, as we swung around the saddle into Easter Bowl – a long, open powder pitch with few tracks.
With the minus temperatures soon chilling us, we looped around to catch the Timber Bowl Express again up to the new Lost Boys Cafe – a rustic, large-windowed spruce log cafe overlooking the town of Fernie thousands of feet below and peaks marching into the distance.
With no running water, the cafe shuns the usual burger-and-fries lunch fare in favor of gourmet potatoes: cheese and broccoli, taco, pizza, even turkey dinner.
The prices – $10 to $14, Canadian – seemed steep until we saw the monsters. My husband and I quickly opted to split a chili potato with mango salsa on the side, and wolfed down every scrap.
The cafe’s rusticity extends beyond its décor and menu. With no flush toilets, an adjacent outhouse services the cafe and Timber Bowl visitors. It’s no typical ramshackle wooden closet, but rather upscale with stone floors, large, roomy restrooms, and a waterless hand cleaner.
It’s actually easier to access than clomping to most restrooms tucked in lodge basements; kick off your skis, pop inside, and you’re back on your boards again in minutes.
A testament to snows
Not only does the skiing attest to good powder, but Fernie Alpine Resort has a music that only accompanies big snows – on average, 28 feet per season. After storms, avalanche bombs resound through the basins.
Because heavy snows coupled with winds construct cornices overhanging the steep bowls, Fernie has one of the largest avalanche programs in North America. Its 30-member ski patrol uses $130,000 of explosives each year to control avalanches – second in Canada only to British Columbia Highways.
Fernie also supplements its avalanche program with four certified rescue dogs.
While skiing from the White Pass chairlift, we watched ski patrollers boot pack up a steep slope to climb a wobbly ladder atop the Lizard Range. On the cliff above Timber Bowl, they lowered a charge down with a rope. We heard the explosion, saw the smoke, then marveled as the ensuing slide rocketed downhill – an awesome spectacle, and proof of nature’s power.
During heavy storms, Currie, Cedar, and Lizard bowls close until conditions stabilize. With the staggered reopening of bowls, skiers and riders can find fresh tracks for days, just as we found lingering, untouched powder down Morning Glory.
Slopeside sleeping
A decade ago, a few small ski lodges and cabins clustered around the Fernie ski hill. But with development in the past several years, pickings run from high-end vacation homes and condos to smaller inns and chalets.
If you’re looking for last-minute deals, you’ll find them on the resort’s Web site. But read locations carefully. Some lodges require a walk across a parking lot or down a road to reach a skiway; others are ski-in with a hike uphill to return to the lifts. Only a handful are true ski-in/ski-out lodges.
Adjacent to the Mighty Moose T-bar, Snow Creek Lodge ($159-$599 Canadian) defines convenience. Walk 10 feet out the back door, step into your skis, and glide in seconds down the slope to the Elk Quad.
Because ski lockers sit adjacent to underground parking a few paces from the back door, there’s no hauling skis up or down stairs or cleaning snow off the car to pop into town for dinner.
Favored curry
No trip to Fernie is complete without dining at a local favorite, The Curry Bowl (971 Seventh Ave., 250-423-BOWL).
Three miles from the ski hill, the old mining town of Fernie straddles Highway 3. Tucked away on a side street paralleling the highway, the small restaurant stuffs its dozen tables into the first floor of an old house.
Billing itself as “enlightened Asian cuisine,” The Curry Bowl serves a smattering of Thai, Indonesian and Japanese dishes without a boatload of chilies drowning out subtle flavors.
Choosing between the nine curries – ranging from traditional Massaman and Panang to surprising mango-shrimp – is difficult. We agreed on family-style orders of Bombay chicken with a rich curry sauce, shrimp Pad Thai, and an Indonesian fried rice with a sweet, spicy sambal – a delightful trio of distinct tastes to tickle our tongues.
As predicted, we scooped leftovers to take home for lunch the next day – trying to figure out how to explain the fried rice we were bringing back across the border.