Cat Boarding in Fernie

We were off to Canada to spend a two week holiday split between Fernie and
Panorama. We flew into Calgary with Monarch via Inghams
and headed off to Fernie.

Towards the end of our first week (once we’d got our powder legs back) we decided to try a day Cat boarding with Fernie Wilderness Adventures.

We woke up early on the day of the trip to rain in the valley which raised our hopes of getting some nice fresh snow higher up! After a decent breakfast we headed off in our rented car (could have been a boat for the way it drove though) and headed off about 10 miles up the road and then down a very slippery, icy dirt track (thank God for traction control) up to the lodge.

After a concise briefing to the group (about 10 people) we hopped into that Cat and headed up the mountain, we stopped half-way to do a little transceiver practice which was too brief to be useful but quite good fun anyway.

The first run…
was truely fantastic. Perfect powder all the way down through some fairly widely spaced trees, most of the rest of the runs were similar. They have a huge area to play with so we didn’t do the same run twice (though you easily could have done). The highlight for me was a steep open slope covered in really deep snow that hadn’t been boarded that season. It only lasted for 6-7 turns before we went into the trees but boy were they good turns! We got 9-10 runs covering about 12-13000 vertical feet. We finished off the day with a gentle slope out to the bottom and a big bowl of soup.

A great day boarding for about £120 lunch, guiding and transceivers included. I never wanted to buy another lift pass again.

For those of you who may be wondering; no animals (cats or otherwise) were harmed in the process of this holiday. However there may have been a few lightly bruised trees