Fernie

I was getting some X-rays taken yesterday on my well-worn hips, and picked up the lone SKI magazine on the big rack in this tropical paradise of Cairns.

The Fernie Ski Resort, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, was listed as one of the magazine’s top five ski destinations in the world. It was hardly recognizable to me from the glossy magazine pictures. It had certainly changed, but what hasn’t? It took me back to when I was a kid, growing up in Fernie; growing up on the “hill”.

My older sisters were much faster, stronger and more graceful skiers than I ever was. Just one of many reasons I was always proud to be allowed to ‘hang’ with them.

Jackie took me on a bit of a bush trail alongside a creek on the Lizard Run one day. There were places where the fast moving water had melted the ice and she told me I had better be careful: if I fell in one of the holes I would be a ‘goner”. I had no idea what a goner was but I knew I didn’t want to metamorph into one of those!

My sisters also showed me the bear caves, where the hungry animals would spend their winter months trying to sleep, or catch little girls that woke them. That would shut me up, at least for a while.

So, while I loved my family, I spent most of my time with my best friend Cathy (with a ‘C’). Cathy loved noise as much as I did and we would sing at the top of our lungs: “She’ll be comin round the Mountain when she comes!” as the wooden T-Bar would drag us up to ‘24’. We were best friends and racing rivals. For more than a couple of years, or was it just a season, either her or I would take first place at the hill’s races: giant slalom was our specialty.

When ‘tourists’ started visiting, from as far away as Calgary, we would line up separately, in the hope that some cute guy would need a partner to balance the bar. Guys with names like Paul or Brad were especially desired.

Sometimes the lodge would be short handed in the kitchen of the big A-Frame building dad designed and built: a larger replica of our cabin at the lake. I really enjoyed the warmth and aromas from the open fire and the chips and gravy I handed out as we listened to the Beatles, “Let it Be” over and over on the juke for a quarter.

We usually skied on weekends and holidays, but there were other ways to get up the hill. ‘Lice’ scares were always welcome. The school gym would fill up with parents armed with little black combs, searching student heads for the little white eggs. We would pretend to be so disgusted we couldn’t possibly attend such a dirty place. Luckily, my mother, one of the volunteers, agreed.

Equipment was expensive, but also a priority at our house. I remember when I got my first set of metal skies (yes.. it was leather boots and wooden boards when we started out!). Dad and I drove to Lethbridge and picked out some Blizzards for me and a set of Heads for himself. It was a memorable trip home as the wind caught in our newly purchased “sails”, desperately clinging to the ski rack on the back of the little VW bug.

I remember… hands and feet burning as the cold came out of them by the fire.

… frostbite on my cheeks

... eyelids freezing shut.

… frozen frost covered facial hair turning me into a female Santa.

… nights with a toboggan, going up the tow and then flying down from the 14^th tower, out of control and loving it.

Years later I spent a year working as a ski instructor up this same hill. It had more lifts by then, more people and it was my children now racing down the hill, getting lost on the trails and eating fries and gravy in the one of the many new lodges.

New Zealand had invaded by this time and these trendy little travelers dominated as 'lifties' on the three chair lifts. The old T-Bar was long gone and a poma-lift had replaced the rope tow on the bunny hill.

Jumping ahead a few more years, my son got a job in Kelsies, just one of many of the franchise eatery/bars on the hill and when I went to see him in the summer I rented a mountain bike to ride down the mountain. A chair lift dropped off my bike and I, just where the old tower 24 used to reign.

Jumping ahead again, to yesterday, as I sat waiting in the doctor’s office staring down at the Ski! magazine, I was in awe of the changes that are still taking place. The ski hill was hardly recognizable. But, as I looked more carefully, I realized that this was still the same place my father saw as he gazed out his office window in Fernie, as a big company dozer headed out to clear the trees for that very first run.

The mountains have changed their dressing, but not their shape.

And my sisters still let me tag along.