Finally Fernie Locals - sort of

The walk beside the river in Fernie

Well, I have finally had time to get another blog post up. We have moved twice and our current house has no internet just yet. So that makes it difficult to blog. We have found it pretty hard to find a good, cheap place to live, so have settled for good. The ski hill has 70% returning staff from last year, and so jobs are also in short supply. But hopefully we will find something to sustain us.

Fairy Creek Falls

 After a week in Fernie, we were sick of being inside (mostly house and job hunting), so we went out in the rain for a short hike. Because the car was playing up, we chose Fairy Creek Falls, just out the East side of town. It was a poorly marked and slightly confusing walk because it is through a future development area, and the whole place is littered with different roads and bike tracks. But, we're used to poorly marked Australian tracks, so we found our way. The falls were small, but very pretty and worth the effort.

They put a lot of effort into their trail signs here

On Saturday morning we arrived at the community centre for the annual ski swap. We were over half an hour early, and there were already 100 people there. Brandon got a snowboard, unfortunately I did not. There were less than 1/4 the amount of boards compared to skis there. Clearly skiing is more popular.

Our first big hike was to Castle Mountain, which offers spectacular panoramic views over the valley that fernie is in, and faces the ski hill. We drove the short distance out of town, and along a "No Entry" road to get to the trailhead. The lower parts of the trail are shared with mountain bikers and are pretty unpleasant because there is a large rill in the middle of the track from the bikes. 

It only took us about 3hrs in total to do the walk, including a stop for lunch and plenty of photos at the top. Subway has become our new favourite for lunch, $6 for a footlong that we can share - can't go past $3 for lunch!

We have yet to buy some bear spray!!

Well worth the effort!