Boot & Fernie

13 hours after leaving London Heathrow I arrive at my accommodation in Fernie to a house party, thrown by the course attendees who had arrived a week earlier. The house I will be calling home for the next twelve weeks resides 12 others but there are far more guests at the party, making it unclear who are actually going to be my housemates. Despite employing Derren Brown memory techniques I quickly forget the names of the many people I meet (perhaps I'll suggest name badges...)

The following day is spent exploring Fernie, a small mountain town comprising mainly ski/snowboard shops and primarily relying on visitors of the Fernie resort. We also attend the first of our 'technical sessions', a discussion on equipment which concludes with me convinced that I need to spend $350 on boot customisation. Like the mechanic who forbids you to drive out of his garage with 'those tyres', the presenters of the talk advise me not to ride a single day more in my ankles, without their custom orthotics. Their use of technical and physiological terms promptly close the sale.

We are allocated and introduced to the groups we'll be riding in for the next 5 weeks and I am surprised, pleased and apprehensive not to find myself in the lowest group. Any fears are soon alleviated when the switch riding and chairlift dismounting ability I had developed in Breck firmly qualify me for this group. The first two days of riding are unstructured, informal and are aimed at finding 'snow legs'. We also get to explore some of the Fernie resort: a vast, challenging and unpopulated resort (there are no queues on any chairlift).

My intention for this trip was to focus on the snowboarding and try to avoid a binge drinking replay of fresher's week. My alarm wakes me at 7:30am on Saturday morning, after 3 hours of sleep, in order to see the Olympic torch parade through Fernie. Still slightly inebriated I head to the town hall with the rest of the Fernie community, acknowledging that my good intentions may well be challenged over the next 12 weeks...