At Fernie Alpine Resort, we realize that a lot of our guests are locals, as well as from the surrounding cities. With our guests travelling from out of town in mind, we’re excited to debut a groundbreaking program in the ski industry – the Sunday late check out. This winter, if staying in Lizard Creek Lodge or Fernie Slopeside Lodge at Fernie Alpine Resort you won’t have to check out until 2pm! Giving you and your family the time needed to get in a couple more runs, finish up that ski school program or just relax a bit before having to jump in your car to head home.
To book a Fernie Alpine Resort winter ski trip, book at the Fernie Alpine Resort booking website, chat online with an agent on the RCR vacations website or give us a call at 1-800-258-7669.
In Hollywood they say there’s no business like show business, and in Fernie we say there’s no business like snow business. And when we say business, we mean business. No matter what type of rider you are, we’ve put together a secret little list of tips for you to steal and use this season straight from the best source, our staff and locals. So, steal this list and find places on the mountain to explore you might never have known existed, find some of the best scenery Fernie offers or cruise down the longest run for a relaxing ride down. So pick up your trail map from the resort or download it from the Mountain Stats section on our website, find these runs and have the best day at Fernie of your life!
Morning Glory
#2 – Black
Morning Glory [in Siberia Bowl] has great morning light, a good pitch and nice tree spacing. Looking for those powder stashes and untouched spots on the mountain? Look no further than Morning Glory for the best chance!
Morning Glory in Siberia Bowl
Mama Bear or Papa Bear
#118, 119 – Double Black
For some of the most amazing view you can image, ride the Polar Peak lift (the newest lift at Fernie Alpine Resort) to the summit. Start above the clouds and descend to get to the sunshine, enjoy amazing view and ride a huge vertical on your way down. There are also 2 blue runs off Polar Peak – try Polar Coaster (#124) or Polar Circus (#125) for an easier way down. As Powder Matt likes to say “this one works better than a strong cup of coffee to get that heart pounding fun going on!
Mama & Papa Bear runs
Corner Pocket
#93 – Double Black
Mother Nature presented Fernie with an interesting problem at Corner Pocket. Corner Pocket (in Lizard Bowl) is a tight entrance to steep chutes, being a high wind area the snow was often blown away. About 10 years ago, Fernie’s ski patrol came up with an idea – tires! Hauling tires across the mountain to this hidden spot one a time patrol finally was able to create a system to get to the steeps without ruining the bottom your of your skis. Climbing here you’ll find some of the best powder at the resort!
Cornerpocket
Sky Dive
#93 – Double Black
Currie Bowl, home to the popular Sky Dive run, is loved by the more extreme rider, drop into Currie for some of the best steeps on the mountain (but we didn’t tell you that). “I love Currie bowl for many different reasons. The famed Currie rope drop, the whole Concussion zone and Alpha Centari just to name a few. But the main reason is it accesses the Big 3. For me there is no better situation at Fernie Alpine Resort than being the first track down Skydive on a pow day. Top to bottoming that beast is the best feeling in the world. You definitely deserve some Griz Bar pints after picking off all 3!”
– Kieran Summers, Owner Giv’Er Shirtworks
Currie Bowl, where you’ll find Sky Dive
Easter Bowl
#49 – Black
Arguably the favourite bowl at Fernie Alpine Resort, Lizard is great for the thrill seeker. Home to the locals’ favourite area Easter Bowl, Lizard is also the location of the Headwall. “The lizard bowl is like falling for the girl in the hot miniskirt and realizing she’s as kind as the girl next door”
– Tyler, Fernie Ski Patrol
Easter!
Surprize and Shaky Acres
#98 – black, #13 – Blue
You’ll be hard pressed to find a rider who doesn’t love Surprize. Located in Timber Bowl, surprise is laden with challenging terrain coming in through the trees but also has some slightly easier and wide open spots (like Shaky Acres). This bowl accommodates almost any skier/rider (plus you get to show off your skills for all those on the chairlift as you pass below) and everyone likes a show off, right?
Snake Main & Glades
#82 & 82A – Black
Cedar Bowl is another local favourite with lots of natural rollers and fall lines, providing amazing vista’s and views. End your day at the Snake Ridge area, where the snow is known to be some of the deepest at the resort. Snake Ridge stays freshest the longest and you can get in some great long laps!
Snake Ridge
Snake Ridge, skier – Dylan Siggers
Need to look any of these spots up? View and download our trail map online.
See you out here!
The RCR Rockies Card
The Best Deal in the Rockies
It’s simple – buy the card at a low cost and save all ski season long! Purchase a discount card online, by calling 1-800-258-7669 or through one of the retailers listed below – don’t forget to purchase yours before they go off sale on December 26th!
- 3 FREE Days
- 4 Great Resorts
- Up to $30 daily savings
- Direct to lift option
- FREE Kids Card (with purchase of adult)
The RCR Rockies Cards are only on sale until December 26th! Don’t miss out!
For more information and to buy online visit the RCR Webstore.
Also available at;
- Sport Chek
- Calgary Co-op
- AMA
- Sobeys
- IGA
- Ski Cellar
- Ski West
- Sundance
- Technosport
- Alpenland
- Gerick Sports
- Out of Bounds
Fernie is full of passion. Arguably, first and foremost, many are die hard skiers or snowboarders and enjoy all the perks that come with having Fernie Alpine Resort in their backyard. However, outside of the resort there are plenty of other fun things to do and see in Fernie, B.C. If you’re looking to venture further into the Fernie culture, here are some suggestions to help you plan the perfect Fernie itinerary:
Ghostriders Hockey Game
Named after the Legend of the Ghostrider, the locals in Fernie are super into their hockey and extremely (borderline obsessively so) supportive of their team – similar to the rest of Canada. If you’re in town during a Ghostriders game it would be an outrage to not see it!
Check out the Ghostriders schedule on their website. Photo courtesy of Ghostriders flickr.
Read about the Legend of the Ghostrider.
Take a Hot Tub Time Machine Tour
That’s right, Hot Tub Time Machine. The popular 2010 John Cusack movie was filmed largely in Fernie, some of the filming locations include Main Street (2nd Ave), The Brickhouse on 2nd Ave, The Plaza at Fernie Alpine Resort. Stop by and see if you can recognize Fernie disguised as the fictional Kodiak Valley from the movie.
Visit the Miners Tour & City Hall
Fernie, like many B.C towns, owes a lot of their history to mining. Outside the architecturally pleasing City Hall is a shrine to the miners that made its history, paved with 300 bricks with the names of miners and mining families. Walk through the set up and read educational plaques and learn about history through interactive features.
Also nearby for a visit are the Fernie Courthouse, Museum, Arts Station and Heritage Library. More info.
Go for a Winter Bike
New this season, dedicated trails and rental bikes for Winter Fat Biking! Monster tires and low gearing means biking in the snow is easy and fun for both first timers and seasoned cyclists. Take a tour – the resort will offer rental bikes and tours/lessons with guides this winter. More info.
Eat Delicious Food
Like most cool little towns, Fernie has a thriving food industry. With many places to dine including some gems like The Loaf or The Brickhouse on ‘main street’ or Yamagoya Sushi. Stay tuned for another article featuring the best places to eat in Fernie!
Visit the Spa
With a few spas to choose from in Fernie, you can stay on mountain and enjoy the Lizard Creek Lodge spa or venture into town. What better way to feel great after a long day of riding the pow than to have a relaxing massage? For a full list of available spas visit the Tourism Fernie website.
Snowshoeing/Cross Country Skiing
Fernie Alpine Resort and the surrounding area has an extensive network of cross country ski trails and snowshoeing trails. The trails at the resort are regularly maintained (groomed & trackset) and are multi-use trails, free of charge. Snowshoe and Nordic ski rentals as well as guided tours are available at the 
resort, or roam around on your own and enjoy nature’s tranquility (maps and signage on the trails will let you know where to go). In addition, the Fernie Nordic Society maintains a great network of trails at the provincial park and golf course (membership or day use fee required).
For more information on what to do while visiting Fernie visit the Things to Do in Resort or Things to Do in Town sections on our website or the Tourism Fernie website.
Words by Cali Sammel
Photos by Fernie Ghostriders, Fernie Alpine Resort and Cali Sammel
Confession – before my wife and I had kids I would walk across a few football fields of parking lot to get to the lifts if it meant my efforts would be rewarded with fresh tracks. However now that I have a family, the expression “ski in-ski out” has the same dreamy connotations for me as the words “free beer.” Except unlike the latter, ski in- ski out actually exists. It took me just a couple of trips across the ski resort parking lot, with multiple pairs of skis stacked in my arms like firewood, while coaxing kids with promises of hot chocolate before even completing a single run, to truly realize that the way accommodation is situated in relation to the lifts can make a huge difference to the quality of a holiday at the ski hill.
Options like this are not available to everyone
That’s why, Fernie Alpine Resort got it right when they designed and developed the chalet style Lizard Creek Lodge, one of the first luxury boutique ski-ski out lodges in Fernie when it first opened in 2000. The Lizard is convenience defined. If you want, you could soak in the lodge’s outdoor hot tub and almost carry on a conversation with a friend about to board the Elk Chair a few ski lengths away. That’s how close and convenient Lizard Creek Lodge is to the action the slope. The lodge’s legendary great room is undergoing a transformation for this season, that will retain the space’s warm mountain aesthetic but with the added touch of an ice lounge and sushi bar.
Ski in – ski out also defines the aptly named Slopeside Inn near the resort plaza, and the Thunder Ridge Chalets, beautifully arranged in wooded settings next to the Elk Chair. And if you want an extended lunch or mid-day beverage, slide to a stop at the base area’s Mountain Plaza, warm up in Kelsey’s On The Mountain or polish the tables with the sleeves of ski sweater at the hallowed Griz Bar. Afterward, click into your bindings and slide down to the lift and hop on, or to the door of your lodge. It may seem like a small detail, but it’s one that counts. At Fernie you want to leave it all on the slopes, whether it’s exploring powder lines and steeps in the resort’s five Lizard Range alpine bowls, or lapping top to bottoms with the kids on the Elk Chair – after all who wants to schlep across parking lots, with tired kids in tow, when you can ski in and ski out. Words that are magic to any family’s ears.
Words by Andrew Findlay
Imagine this; you wake up from your slumber early, really early. And you’re not getting back to sleep. What do you do? What do most of us do? Grab our smart phones. Now, when you grab your phone you’ll have the ability to get the most up to date information for snow conditions, weather reports, trail maps, resort info and more from one handy app for Fernie Alpine Resort (and our other RCR resorts).
Your next problem – it’s going to be a powder day!! Time to call in sick and head out to the mountains!
For more information on our App read our Press Release.
Image this. Standing on the edge of a massive alpine bowl, peering down at the absolutely epic vastness of it and nearly drooling at the pristinely perfect powder it laden with below you. Now imagine not 1, not 2, not even 3 of these bowls but five huge alpine bowls (all in one spot), and you’ve got Fernie Alpine Resort.
Fernie Alpine Resort, located in Fernie, B.C., is one of those places people would refer to as a hidden gem. The masses haven’t yet discovered it, and as a result, it is a large ski resort with a massive amount of terrain known for its uncrowded slopes (and, of course, for up to 37 feet of powder a season). Most people who have been lucky enough to discover Fernie, or even luckier yet, to live in Fernie, have a strong opinion of their favourite terrain to ride at the resort and why.
Here are some tips on where to check out (but you didn’t hear this from us):
Currie Bowl
No, not the food. The more extreme rider loves Currie Bowl. Drop into Currie for some of the best steeps on the mountain.
“I love Currie Bowl for many different reasons. The famed Currie rope drop, the whole Concussion zone and Alpha Centauri just to name a few. But the main reason is it accesses the Big 3. For me, there is no better situation at FAR than being the first track down Skydive on a pow day. Top to bottoming that beast is the best feeling in the world. You definitely deserve some Griz Bar pints after picking off all 3!”
– Kieran Summers, Owner Giv’Er Shirtworks
Timber
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a rider who doesn’t love White Pass or Surprize. Timber is laden with challenging terrain coming in through the trees but also has some slightly easier and wide open spots, like Shaky Acres. This bowl accommodates almost any skier/rider (plus, you get to show off your skills for all those on the chairlift as you pass below), and everyone likes a show-off, right?
“Timber is sick because of the trees that catch the pow pow. You can access the trees from either the Timber Chair or the Whitepass Chair. If you hit Whitepass and drop skiers right (lookers left), you can grab that pow hidden in the trees rapid fire over and over again, and it gets boring fast…….NOT.”
– Mark Kowalchuk, co-owner of Artschool Skateboards & Clayman Ltd.
Siberia
Siberia Bowl is known for its long and vast runs, where you might not see another rider for days. If you’re looking for untouched, hidden powder, Siberia Bowl is the place to check out.
“A lot of people think that as soon as you get off the chair, you should instantly go right instead of heading straight – they would be wrong.”
– Lynch from X92.9 Calgary’s Best Rock Alternative
Lizard
Arguably, the favourite bowl at Fernie Alpine Resort, Lizard, is great for the thrill seeker. Home to the locals’ favourite area, Easter Bowl, Lizard is also the location of the Headwall, where pro athletes gather each season in an epic race and compete for great prizes in the Monster Enemy Lines event.
“The Lizard Bowl is like falling for the girl in the hot miniskirt and realizing she’s as kind as the girl next door”
– Tyler, Fernie Ski Patrol
Cedar
Cedar Bowl is a local favourite with lots of natural rollers and fall lines, providing amazing vistas and views. Snake Ridge stays freshest the longest, and you can get in some great long laps.
“Haul Back, Boom, Repeat!”
-Paul Whitham, Sales at RCR
With over 2500 acres of skiable terrain, many of which are in the bowls, possibly the only problem you’ll run into while riding at Fernie Alpine Resort is not having enough time to ride it all. But that’s okay; it just gives you another excuse to come back!
If you could design the perfect ski town it would look like Fernie. Except Fernie, tucked into the mountains of southeastern BC, comes by its charm naturally. Brick and wood heritage buildings, which hearken to the town’s rich mining history, line inviting downtown streets where boutique cafes and gear shops reveal Fernie’s modern incarnation as a ski and outdoor paradise. Gaze south from the town along the Elk River Valley and you’ll be dazzled by the tantalizing five-pack of alpine bowls – Siberia, Cedar, Timber, Currie and Lizard – that unfold from the rugged Lizard Range and comprise the diversity of terrain that makes Fernie Alpine Resort a bucket list item for skiers from around the world. Ten lifts service 10 square kilometres of terrain with a vertical drop of nearly 1100 metres, and home to an astounding 142 named runs. That doesn’t even include the dreamy glades and secret tree skiing stashes too numerous to be known by anything other than local names. And then there’s the snow. Nature pays special attention to the legendary Lizard Range, a magical piece of geology that puts the lie to the claim that it never really snows in the Canadian Rockies. Fernie Alpine Resort boasts by far the deepest snowpack of any ski area in the Rockies, with an average nine metres of annual snowfall. From my home on the West Coast of BC, I’ve monitored Fernie snow reports over the years with the intense envy that only numbers like “-10C” and “30 cms of fresh” can induce in a ski bum like me.
View of the Elk Chair & Plaza from Lizard Creek Lodge.
But Fernie offers more than alpine bowls and steep tree skiing. Some mountains simply work well for families. Fernie is one such resort. When you stay on mountain, you can park your car and leave it in the underground parkade, whether it’s Lizard Creek Lodge or one of the other on hill accommodations. There’s no dreading the morning ritual of herding gear and kids across endless parking lots before you even get a glimpse of a chairlift. Plenty of thought went into the design and layout of the Fernie base area, ensuring that condos and lodges were located within easy striking distance of the lifts and ticket office. Put simply, Fernie embodies the ski in, ski out ethic. Click in, and slide down to the lift; it doesn’t get any easier. Advanced riders can feast on steep alpine and sub-alpine terrain like Corner Pocket, a spicy couloir that deposits you atop Lizard Bowl, or Gotta Go a steep drop through glades that funnel into Currie Bowl. Kids and beginners can get their kicks on the lower half of the mountains on green circle and blue square groomers, or in the mini terrain park, never far from a hot chocolate or a soak in the hot tub back at the slope side condo or lodge, where you can
Fernie, during the filming of Hot Tub Time Machine
rehearse your favorite lines from Hot Tub Time Machine (in 2009 Fernie was temporarily transformed into a 1980s ski resort for the filming of this John Cusack sci-fi comedy classic.) On those days when the family needs to rest the legs, or simply wants the afternoon off, you can hop in the car and in 15 minutes be strolling along main street Fernie, perusing for deals in the ski and outdoor shops, or enjoying an espresso or gelato at the Beanpod. Or perhaps the adults will sneak away for a craft brew tasting at Fernie Brewing Company on the outskirts of town. There’s a synergy in the Elk Valley that brings skiers and riders back time and time again. Fernie Alpine resort and the historic town of Fernie don’t compete for the visitor’s attention; they complement one another, and enhance the experience of skiing at a world class resort and soaking in the ambiance of an authentic mountain town with a long history of skiing and adventure.
Photos by Henry Georgi & Robin Siggers
