By Ryland Nelson

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly!

The Fernie resort ski season has started off with a bang! It has barely stopped snowing in the upper bowls since opening day on December 4th. The latest storm has brought close to 40cm in the last few days bringing our base up to nearly 120cm. I’ve been skiing fresh lines every day since opening day! The skiing has been really great!

But….

If you were to judge this by typical Fernie standards it’s been bad. Really bad. Opening day saw basically one run from the top of the bear to the bottom. A couple other runs were barely passable and covered in dense bush. The snow that was out there was barely half a meter. And that is only on the upper half of the mountain. Lower mountain, below the Bears Den, is completely devoid of any snow pack outside the few snowmaking zones.

Backcountry Burrlapz | Classic FUDANGLED! from Burrrlapz on Vimeo.

Upper mountain continues to improve. With the new side open we now have the entire Timber and Upper Currie Bowl zones that are skiing great on a decent base. But only down to Trespass trail…. It’s a download only situation unless you want to walk to the base in the mud. I actually downloaded the Timber chair for the first time with ski’s. It’s that bad.

And it’s going to get ugly…

This morning (Tuesday Dec 8) the temperature has started to skyrocket. It is now above freezing mid mountain and it is forecast to rise above the top of the Lizard Range tonight, albeit briefly, before it drops again.

But it’s going to get better! As the freezing level drops back to the surface by tomorrow (Wednesday Dec 9th) we are going to get a bunch more snow, all the way to the base area! Hopefully with some cooler temperatures that will allow the snowmakers to get blasting again and a little help from mother nature We should be skiing on all the lifts, top to bottom by this time next week!

Thinking Cool Thoughts..