After much consideration and input from a number of followers I have decided to restart the blog from tomorrow. I apologise for the interruption of the service but I can assure you all it has been none of my doing and is down to the remarkable intransigence of others. I am however not one to bear grudges and regard all this as water over the dam - at least from my point of view.
Just on a point of reassurance I can confirm that the blog will have no restrictions or censorship and what you will get from me will be the facts as I see them an opinions on various aspects of skiing in Fernie - I will try to distinguish between fact and opinion but there will be times when you just have to work it out for yourselves. I can also confirm that despite some quite attractive offers I receive no money or favours for writing the blog so what you get here is what I think and not what I am paid to think. As before in summary the purpose of the blog will be to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
It will probably be helpful to put in here a background report on where we are on the hill in terms of conditions just to save time later on. After a slow start to the season when the base dropped to about 60 cms it started to snow just before Christmas and has been snowing pretty consistently ever since. The snow has been interspersed with a few (unreported) rain events which has had the effect of giving us a very solid 311 cm base which is something of a record for this time of year. The upper mountain has stayed in great shape but the lower mountain and particularly the lower parts of the Old Side are rather scratchy. The early season alder problem has been beaten into submission and you can now ski anywhere on the mountain fence to fence with great tree skiing low down because of the top to bottom snow cover.
The exception to all this is Polar Peak which has not been open for a single day all season. The problems of getting Polar open have been exacerbated by the very difficult snow pack which has meant that control has had to be focussed on the open ski terrain and the fact that White Pass chair broke down for 12 days just after Christmas making access very challenging. The good news is that a cat finally cut a track to the top yesterday and work can now start in earnest to clear the snow from Polar Top and allow the lift to spin. Best guess I have heard for an opening is next week sometime as long as no further problems come to light.
The interesting thing about having a lot of terrain closed is that we tend to ski in places that we don't normally go. Due to the combination of lift failures and avi risk we spent most of January with less than half of the terrain open and some days and for days at a time it was way less than that. With the good snow and the opening of terrain we have been able to ski some runs that we have only skied lightly before such as White Rabbit, Shaun's Chute and the Crutch. A special mention goes to the Fraser Tooth which is a line off Siberia Ridge into North East Glades and was only cleared out this year - a nice line a great work by Fraser. More of all the skiing tomorrow as things kick off.
Today we had a big warm up with plus temps at the base and light rain in the afternoon. All this was forecast as the front end of a Pacific Warm Front and things are supposed to cool a lot tonight and dump snow - we do in fact have a winter storm warning for the Elk Valley in effect but with the amount of snow they are calling for in the next 24 hours it looks more like a promise than a warning to me. Temps on my deck is +2 but I am not worried, after all when have weather forecasters ever got it wrong.
See you all tomorrow and remember to tell your friends the blog is back in business.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Sunday, February 4, 2018
Day 65 - I'm thinking about it
And what I am thinking about is starting up the blog again.
Let me make it clear that nothing has changed since RCR emailed me on the 3rd December and said "Our Senior Risk Management Team will have to further investigate this matter to determine if further action is required" with further references to removing my pass. Given that 2 months have passed since the date of this email I assume that the great and good who comprise the "Senior Risk Management Team" have met and decided that I don't represent a risk to society and can therefore keep my pass. An email to this effect would have been a nice courtesy but then I suppose I shouldn't expect miracles.
If I do decide to continue the blog then everyone should be aware that there will be no more private emails or off the record chats. Any threats to me will be published here on the blog so everyone can see what is going on. Anyone thinking of threatening me would be well advised to make sure that they are happy for anything they say or write to be published and attributed.
One of the main factors in my consideration is the staggering support I have received from a huge number of followers regarding the blog, I had always hoped that I was providing a useful service but I am quite honestly amazed (and not to mentioned rather touched) by the level of support I have received from a wide range of people both on line and personally on the hill. Followers seem to fall into two camps - those who don't ski every day and want their daily fix of Fernie skiing and those who ski regularly who want source of accurate information about conditions which is sadly lacking from official sources. Both of these seem to be suffering as a result of my decision to stop the blog/
Another factor is purely a personal issue. The blog takes me about an hour an night, sometime less. I am now spending about 2 hours a night answering emails from people either about the blog, or conditions in Fernie or whether or not they should come and ski here with their friends. It would simply be much quicker for me to go back to writing the blog.
In my final post I referred everyone to official sources of information but I have to say that those are just not fit for purpose. Some examples are - a week ago we had a day when it snowed all day with a fall rate of 10 cms an hour at one time and the next day it showed a total of 6 cms in 24 hours - we regularly see the forecast daytime high as being lower than the day time low, I think they transpose the figures - the other morning the figures showed zero snowfall year to date and a zero snow base - only yesterday the base was shown as 295 cms and after no snow in the last 24 hours today (we actually did have some) it showed at 311 cms. It's a complete shambles which I can't make head nor tail of and I ski every day so what hope would anyone else have.
In the absence of my blog to give a reality check the publicity machine (bovine excrement department) appears to have gone into overdrive. We have reports of the huge snowfall in the year to date which fails to mention that a significant proportion of this was washed away in the late November rains. Similarly there is a load of ballyhoo about the 2 metres plus of powder we have received in January which fails to mention that for extended periods we couldn't access it due to lift break downs (I'm sorry, unscheduled maintenance) and avi closures. Don't get me wrong, you will never hear me criticise the patrol for closing the hill for safety reasons but I do have a problem with the fact that this is not mentioned in the "awesome powder" publicity circus. Don't even get me on the subject of the toilets, parking and day lodge facilities, none of which come near coping on high traffic days.
Finally a number of my conspiracy theorist friends (of whom I seem to have a disproportionate number) take the view that as RCR have always hated my blog as something that is beyond their control (a fact that has been stated to me on a number of occasions by senior management) that this is part of a larger plot to gag me and by stopping the blog I am playing into their hands. I can't say if this is right but it certainly is point of view.
So in summary all these factors are rolling around in my brain at the moment. In the next couple of days I will make my final decision as to whether or not to shut down this site forever or to try and go back to something like normal service. Any thoughts or inputs which may help me with my decision would be more than welcome.
PS Sorry about the small type, can't seem to do anything to make it larger but any future posts would be back to normal
Let me make it clear that nothing has changed since RCR emailed me on the 3rd December and said "Our Senior Risk Management Team will have to further investigate this matter to determine if further action is required" with further references to removing my pass. Given that 2 months have passed since the date of this email I assume that the great and good who comprise the "Senior Risk Management Team" have met and decided that I don't represent a risk to society and can therefore keep my pass. An email to this effect would have been a nice courtesy but then I suppose I shouldn't expect miracles.
If I do decide to continue the blog then everyone should be aware that there will be no more private emails or off the record chats. Any threats to me will be published here on the blog so everyone can see what is going on. Anyone thinking of threatening me would be well advised to make sure that they are happy for anything they say or write to be published and attributed.
One of the main factors in my consideration is the staggering support I have received from a huge number of followers regarding the blog, I had always hoped that I was providing a useful service but I am quite honestly amazed (and not to mentioned rather touched) by the level of support I have received from a wide range of people both on line and personally on the hill. Followers seem to fall into two camps - those who don't ski every day and want their daily fix of Fernie skiing and those who ski regularly who want source of accurate information about conditions which is sadly lacking from official sources. Both of these seem to be suffering as a result of my decision to stop the blog/
Another factor is purely a personal issue. The blog takes me about an hour an night, sometime less. I am now spending about 2 hours a night answering emails from people either about the blog, or conditions in Fernie or whether or not they should come and ski here with their friends. It would simply be much quicker for me to go back to writing the blog.
In my final post I referred everyone to official sources of information but I have to say that those are just not fit for purpose. Some examples are - a week ago we had a day when it snowed all day with a fall rate of 10 cms an hour at one time and the next day it showed a total of 6 cms in 24 hours - we regularly see the forecast daytime high as being lower than the day time low, I think they transpose the figures - the other morning the figures showed zero snowfall year to date and a zero snow base - only yesterday the base was shown as 295 cms and after no snow in the last 24 hours today (we actually did have some) it showed at 311 cms. It's a complete shambles which I can't make head nor tail of and I ski every day so what hope would anyone else have.
In the absence of my blog to give a reality check the publicity machine (bovine excrement department) appears to have gone into overdrive. We have reports of the huge snowfall in the year to date which fails to mention that a significant proportion of this was washed away in the late November rains. Similarly there is a load of ballyhoo about the 2 metres plus of powder we have received in January which fails to mention that for extended periods we couldn't access it due to lift break downs (I'm sorry, unscheduled maintenance) and avi closures. Don't get me wrong, you will never hear me criticise the patrol for closing the hill for safety reasons but I do have a problem with the fact that this is not mentioned in the "awesome powder" publicity circus. Don't even get me on the subject of the toilets, parking and day lodge facilities, none of which come near coping on high traffic days.
Finally a number of my conspiracy theorist friends (of whom I seem to have a disproportionate number) take the view that as RCR have always hated my blog as something that is beyond their control (a fact that has been stated to me on a number of occasions by senior management) that this is part of a larger plot to gag me and by stopping the blog I am playing into their hands. I can't say if this is right but it certainly is point of view.
So in summary all these factors are rolling around in my brain at the moment. In the next couple of days I will make my final decision as to whether or not to shut down this site forever or to try and go back to something like normal service. Any thoughts or inputs which may help me with my decision would be more than welcome.
PS Sorry about the small type, can't seem to do anything to make it larger but any future posts would be back to normal
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