Snowboarding is sik!

Settling in Fernie took me a while, but when i was ready i bought myself a snowboard setup. I was really stoked trying on the boots and finding the right board for me. I had to buy everything...gloves, pants, jacket, goggles, boots and a board. Mike, Casey and i walked to the Hitching spot about 500m away where people heading up to the mountain in their cars pick up those without cars (me). The excitement of finally seeing snow and walking through the Fernie resort was sinking in. I received my season pass from the office and Mike said we should go up the Deer chair to teach me the basics. It was pretty tough, having a surfing background i wanted to use my weight alot which is the wrong thing to do. The Mountain was pretty icy as they hadnt received snow in a while so that didnt help at all. After a couple runsi definitely wasn't feeling confident but i was slowly getting the hang of it. Many many stacks later i had sore hands and a really sore ass. They then took me on some crazy runs for a beginner, a couple of black runs and some trees and i was feeling pretty sketchy. One run i slide down the ice for 150m as i fell and it was too icy to get my edge back!Over the next couple of weeks i slowly improved, by my 10th day of boarding i was feeling confident doing alot bigger turns, bigger jumps and going straighter. :) i was stoked!

I slowly began to learn the mountain and the better routes to take. I began to really enjoy my time here in Fernie, it was amazing! Then like 100 christmases at once we had a big amount of snow over a couple days, like huge amount. Everyone gets excited in the town. We were out at the pub and walked outside and everyone started hugging eachother and jumping around, it was a good vibe in the air! The next morning we were up there bright and early to get amongst the fresh powder. I had heard all about how good of a feeling it was riding in powder...i finally got to experience it! It was soo amazing, and now that i was confident at jumps it was even better! It feels like floating on air and still being able to do big surfing turns. We were throwing ourselves off every small cliff and drop and hitting every jump flat out because you just cant get hurt. We spent the whole day up there just frothing at every run. More and more days of fresh powder seemed to come our way and i was loving everyday more and more.

Over the next month until i left i felt i was getting good at what i was practicing, jumps were getting bigger and i began to do some rails and boxes in the park. We did some amazing hikes that lead us to the most amazing powder, best tree runs and some beautiful untouched back country. Fernie is just another world. ITS AMAZING!!!

I came, stacked it...alot, learn from my mistakes and by the end, maybe one stack a week and it was mostly due to hitting jumps wrong...i was stoked that i had come soo far!

Here are some photos for anyone who reads this...

Thankyou soo much, hope you enjoy!