Brunch Club

As morning broke i switched off the alarm and stumbled about bleary eyed before realising Leon didn't make it home last night. Having knocked around a few doors, i eventually saw him doing the walk of shame back down the corridor, still in his Ghostriders Jersey!! Turns out he tried to bring a girl back, offered Matt $60 to swap rooms, who promtly told him where to shove it. As a last resort he went and booked a $160 a night hotel room across the road. HAHAHA what a lad!!! Made for priceless chairlift banter too...


We headed up the mountain about 10am for brunch club, of which i havn't taken part in yet due to my series of knee problems. The morning consisted of mainly groomers and chilled out skiing, with a few moguls thrown in on the way down to the restaurant. A little more energised from the lunch at corner pocket, we headed back out onto the increasingly hard packed mountain. Forever willing to find something more extreme than skiing groomers all day, me and Fiona decided we wanted to tick a few more runs off the list. 


First up was Stag Leap, which is a pain to get to, but gets you out onto one of the most distinguised features of the Fernie ski hill, the 3 fingers. On the way up Katie was umming and erring about whether she wanted to try it or not. She decided to go for it, so i made her fist bump as a binding contract that she wouldn't drop out the back when we weren't looking! (Thats how we do it round here)


Stag Leap is the left hand finger as you look at the mountain, and requires a quick hidden traverse through the trees, so most people miss it out completely. The snow was far less tracked as the other two fingers, but wasn't brilliant conditions underfoot, best plan was commit and conquer! Most of us had a good time on Stag Leap though, there was still some good skiing to be had:

Pretty steep, check out the angle of the trees - awesome on a powder day!

Martin bossed this run from the top like a champion and did not stage this photo at all...

Lower down on Stag, still managing to kick up sluff

Fi charging

Leon looking pretty tidy

Katie wasn't a happy bunny after we 'forced' her down and headed down for the 3pm bus, with a most of the others following suit. It was just me and Fiona left on the mountain again so we went to do Siberia ridge from the top. None of the instructors seemed to have skied it yet this year, so we had no idea what it would be like, although looking at it from the bottom, we were expecting lots of alder bushes. As it turned out, there was plenty of snow with nice moguls, and lots of routes down through the alder patches, making it a really good run to hit top to bottom. There was just time for one last tree run in Timber bowl (secretly i just wanted to hit the nice drop from Friday again), after which we headed down. As we crested the last hill down towards the day lodge, we bumped into the snowboarding crew with Steve Kuyt, having completed their first splitboarding session in Lost Boys. They all claim to have had a really good day, so i'm really looking forward to doing my ski touring tomorrow!


A good homecooked chilli was the order of the day again for me and Matt, followed by a few drinks at the Old Nurses Home (the house where some of the guys from the MTM course are staying) and watching Aspen Extreme. Good day, good night!