Even by the normal snowy standards at Fernie Alpine Resort, January has been a little crazy.
Day after day, it seemed as if the B.C. resort has been hit with the sort of blizzard that makes powder-chasers lose their minds.
There was 140 cm the first week and a bit of the month.
The next week, they were hit with 110 cm of the fluffy white stuff.
In the past seven days, they got a further 72 cm.
Fernie always gets a lot of snow, but this is something else entirely. Even veterans of the resort aren’t sure they’ve ever seen anything like it.
“It’s one of the best Januarys ever, for sure,” said Matt Mosteller, vice president of marketing and resort experience at Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, which owns Fernie. “We just came through … two weeks of storms that delivered 13 feet of snow. Now, (our season total) is at 629 cm, which is an incredible amount of snow to-date, but 13 feet fell between Jan. 1 and 17th.”
Generally in this Snow Scene space, we try to highlight all the events and special occasions at resorts around Western Canada. That’s the goal, anyway, but at the end of the day there are a lot of skiers and snowboarders who just want to know where the powder is.
Right now, that’s Fernie.
That 629-cm season total is more than a lot of resorts got for the entirety of the 2018-19 season – admittedly, last year was a little light on powder in a lot of places – and the 13 feet that has fallen so far this month is almost half the resort’s annual average of 30 feet.
And it’s not over, either. A simple glance at the forecast for the next couple weeks reveals there’s a whole lot more snow on the way.
“The snow forecast for the next three weeks is, you know, very, very favourable, let’s just put it that way,” Mosteller said. “Going into February, the storm track has a lot of systems ready and firing. The Fernie factor, it’s the real deal. It’s one of the few places in North America that can refresh with new snow so quickly and regularly.”
With five alpine bowls and a vertical of 3,550 feet, Fernie is the sort of place where that powder goes a long way, too. They’ve got plenty of terrain that is fun to explore when the snow gods haven’t delivered anything for a couple days, but those exact same runs can feel completely different when the powder is deep as it is right now.
“You may ski the same run, but it’s totally different (from the day before) because it snowed 25 cm and the terrain changes after 10 cm,” Mosteller said. “Your line may change and then suddenly ‘Boom,’ you’re on terrain you haven’t done before.”
That’s maybe never been more true than it is right now, when daily blizzards seem to be constantly transforming the mountain and offering a whole new set of alpine adventures.
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