Hey new kid, welcome to the best place on earth. I can see you’re convinced this is going to be your breakout year on the mountain, but how are you going to let everyone know it? This is a transient zone; do you go metric or imperial when quantifying your radness?

The answer is both. And to assist all you newcomers, I’ve compiled the ultimate guide of how to impress correctly and measure accurately. Here are the universal units of measurement found in any Canadian mountain town.    

words :: Crease Mansbridge      Illustrations: Dave Barnes

SPEED
You have to go metric because going 60 miles per hour sounds slow compared to 95 kilometres per hour. But if you’re truly core, you use “mach” followed by a random number or animal. Appropriate use in the lift line is as follows: “I was going mach chicken out of that straightline. Too bad my sponsors’ logos were a blur!”

DISTANCE
Centimetres are reserved for measuring snow depth only, unless you are very poorly endowed. Inches are for penis and bike wheel size, and the correct number to have is 27 and a half for both. Feet are used for measuring cliff hucks. And when it comes to cliffs, obeying the following protocol will make your bragging fit in. Anything less than 15 feet is a 20-footer. Cliffs 15 to 25 feet are 30-footers. After 25, every five feet counts as ten, therefore a 30-foot cliff is a 40-footer, a 40 is a 60-footer, and a 60 is a 100-footer.

Metres are only to be used when describing how big you go to Europeans. This conversion is also simple. Anything below 20 feet is “about ten metres.” For anything above 20 feet, you just subtract ten to convert it to metres. “I just stomped a 30-footer. That’s like a 20 metre huck to you, Sven.”

And on the rare occasion you want to sound humble, just put the word “American” in front of the measurement and leave out the units: “Yeah, it wasn’t that huge though. I guess it was probably an American 50. . . so, what’s your favourite kind of camber?”

WEIGHT
Ounces and pounds should be the only units used in measuring alcohol and drugs, as the people who invented their abbreviations were clearly intoxicated. There is no “z” in ounces, yet there is in “oz” and where the “lbs” abbreviation came from for pounds is clearly straight up invention. The British measurement unit “stone” is only used when estimating how much a rock weighs. It’s about one.

VOLUME
Volume measurements are for lying about the fuel economy of your pickup truck. “Litres per 100 kilometres” is most commonly used, “miles per gallon” is also acceptable. But if you want to be honest yet vague about your measurements, do it in litres per gallon. Most vehicles are around four.

DEPTH (of your lying)
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, the best way to standardize braggadocio is to make it all big—the only things locals here like small are the lift lines. Strict adherence to this protocol helps the rest of us understand what you’re really made of, so if you’re going to lie this winter, please study this guide and try to do it correctly. It’s so much easier to ignore everyone when they’re all speaking the same language.