This utopian ski town in the Kootenays of southeastern BC lives up to its legendary reputation. Words and photos :: Kristin Schnelten
We’re well into our second hour of après at the Griz. Every seat is full. Helmets, goggles and mitts teeter on table ends. Steam rises from base layers and pools in the rafters. Pom poms and braids bobble on the dance floor.
I weave my way back from the bar with another round and find our new best friend Phil (along with our other new best friends, Jacques, Reagan and April—names I will undoubtedly forget before lunch tomorrow) huddled together with my husband. Phil spins around and shouts at me, “Fernie sucks! Don’t go!”
We laugh, clink glasses, choose our shot-ski lineup. But Phil isn’t giving up: “Tell your friends! Fernie sucks!”
These guys are locals—some long-term, others recent imports. They’re proud of their home mountain and happy to share it with us. Doling out guide-level advice and divulging insider hints on town hot spots, they clearly don’t mind visitors. They simply don’t want it to change.
And it’s easy to see why.
A gritty but charming town with a steep but accessible mountain, Fernie is a true gem—a just-right bowl of porridge that hits that elusive sweet spot, with an international community that delivers perpetually welcoming vibes.
We’re here on an extended vacation, in an attempt to scratch a ceaseless itch. That part of us that screams, downright pleads, “Let’s move to the mountains!” but is muffled by a list of facts and figures that can silence the loudest dream. For now, two weeks is all we get. So we’re making the most of it.
For this do-it-like-a-local vacation, we’ve bunked up exactly where a local wouldn’t: a ski-in, ski-out slopeside condo at the Lizard Creek Lodge, just steps from the chairlift. But what better way to cozy up to the real skiers than to interact with them all day, every day?
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We quickly befriend our cast and crew of Aussies: Lulu checks our skis and lets us in on her life ambitions; between courses at the Cirque, Ailish gives my ski-town-scheming son advice on shared housing; and we’re pretty sure we’ve stumbled upon the most genuinely positive lifties in the ski world. The nonchalant down-under attitude seeps into every conversation, and we feel like we’re part of the crew.
The day we arrive, lifts finally reopen after a three-day low-temperature closure. Three days of continuous, airy snowfall. Three days of an empty mountain, piling up with untouched snow. The snow towering on our deck railing is easily two feet deep, and the major task at hand is digging out of this unbelievable cycle.
It’s the famed Fernie Factor, and we’ve managed to hit it square on.
Our first few days are a jumble of whoops and grins, my son stuck on an infinite loop of “I’m just so happy!” declarations. We make frequent hot chocolate breaks (the frigid temps are barely above the passable line) and collapse into exhausted après crumples.
Some of us stick to the lower runs, choosing a favourite and figure-eighting our own tracks. Others head to the top, where there always seems to be a higher lift. And each time we think we’ve found the further bowl, there’s another. And another.
Some evenings we muster the energy to hit the town: At The Brickhouse we each declare our meal the best on the table, greedily blocking one another from sneaking another taste, and at Yamagoya Sushi we rock-paper-scissors for the coveted last piece. And, because Fernie is Fernie, one night we manage to score an invitation to a private Electric Blanket punk show—the next morning somehow finding ourselves hiking to watch Dylan Siggers film a street segment for his upcoming ski movie.
One afternoon we track down Benji and Zephyr, a ski patrol/avy dog duo who are happy to give us a search-and-rescue demonstration and offer insight into life as a pro patroller. Another morning we briefly hit the cross-country track, checking out the trail system before realizing we need to squeeze every drop we can out of these deep pow days.
Because the flipside of the Fernie Factor is what lies between those epic storms—and if you stay long enough you’ll get to experience it, as well. The latter days of our trip see the snow on our deck completely wash away and the shops handing out makeshift rain ponchos. With wet conditions at the bottom and snow on the peaks, some of us manage to squirrel out hidden pockets of fresh snow and still find bottomless turns. Others take the opportunity to rest weary legs.
Downtown, we sample all the flavours of handmade Big Bang Bagels as will fit into our overfilled bellies and we load up on edible souvenirs at the Beanpod, where melted chocolate is piped straight from the bean-to-chocolate workspace to a Wonka-esque countertop tap.
Early on we discover penguin stickers dotted throughout the mountain—stuck on the backs of chairs, slapped onto lift towers. Finding them becomes a game: Who can spot the most in a day? We eventually learn it isn’t a penguin at all, but a free-range duck, created by a visiting ski instructor from the U.K. The point of the unnamed duck: purely to spread joy. We try in vain to secure a stack of our own, but perhaps our lack of success is a good thing. This duck and his joy belong right here.
Michael, our shuttle driver who’s dutifully ferried us around town for the better part of two weeks, drops us back at the lodge for the last time, and I find myself tearing up a bit at the farewell. After reconvening at the Griz for a final round, we hug our goodbyes to tablemates and attempt to double-ski home.
When hiking boots inevitably slip from top sheets, I find myself arse over teakettle at the foot of a liftie just closing up shop. Our shared laughter echoes across the empty run and I lie there, gazing at the sleeping mountain and the endless sky overhead, and think, “Phil’s right. Please don’t change Fernie. Ever.”
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