Milly - week one of the 2 week improvement and performance camp

I'm a brand new Nonstop employee and having never been to Canada before, Nonstop thought I'd better head out to Fernie to experience first hand how awesome it is. Here's how it's going so far...

The Plane

Before last week, the longest flight I had ever been on was a two hour flight to Spain, which turned out to be a pretty boring beach holiday. Despite everyone’s advice (‘just watch the films!’) I wasn’t really prepared for 9 hours in a plane. This is what I learned from my first long haul flight:

• Buy something/things from Duty Free that will keep you occupied for at least an hour or so. It might fill a bit of empty time and a holiday is all about spoiling yourself, so start at the airport. Also, who doesn't love a bargain?

• On that note – treat yourself to a celebratory beverage so you can toast yourself for booking an excellent holiday with Nonstop. Plus it can help the nervous flyer calm down just a little!

• Bring a book that you have been trying to get around to reading for a long time. You will need something engaging and engrossing, so pick a piece of literature that has been on your ‘to read’ list for a while. Also something one should do on holiday!

• Buy awesome snacks. Be a little indulgent, you deserve it.

• Invest in a travel pillow. I ended up dribbling all over the down jacket my mum lent me for the trip.

Despite my slight fear of flying, this first-time long haul flight turned out to be another part of my Canadian adventure. It felt exciting to see the British land-strip fall away because it marked the start of new experiences, even if I was a little nervous!
 

The Arrival

As soon as I saw the Nonstop sign and Mark’s smiling face at arrivals, my nerves disbanded. A flurry of introductions followed (many, many names to remember!) and what was most apparent was that we all instantly had a lot to talk about. Obviously we had some common ground to get started on, but an hour into the coach journey to Fernie and we were having an in-depth conversation about American and British politics! Everyone also discovered what a tourist I was. I think they thought that as I work for Nonstop, I’d be a seasoned Canadian traveler but this trip is actually my very first time outside of Europe, which is proving to be pretty entertaining. It started with trucks; I seem to have developed a fascination with them. There are just so many of them! And mobile homes – every house we passed on the coach had a massive SUV parked next to it. I seemed to feel the need to commentate the traffic: ‘truck, truck, SUV, truck, LORRY – massive lorry! Truck, truck...’ A week in and this has become somewhat of a running joke with all my fellow Nonstoppers shouting ‘Look Milly, TRUCK!’ at me whenever one goes past (pretty often). Since then I have found myself in hysterical excitement at my first ever hockey game, only fueled by a Mike’s Hard Lemonade (a concoction of lemonade, vodka and probably about four table spoons of sugar, that is commonly known as a ‘cooler’ – technical term). I even enthusiastically joined in with the crowd chanting, shouting ‘let’s go rhinos, let’s go!’ Turns out the team is actually called the Fernie Ghost Riders, not the Fernie Ghost Rhinos, which makes more sense, I suppose, and offered my new friends another little chuckle at my expense – I’ve started to see it as providing an extra service to the Nonstop programme. I’ve also excitedly told the supermarket cashier that it was my first time in a Canadian supermarket (she didn’t seem as excited but did give me 50cents off my shopping), taken pictures of ‘Washroom’ signs, ordered a plate of chips and was surprised when a plate of nachos turned up and still haven’t gotten over the amount of trucks here.


 

The Snow

POW! Technical term – I’m ‘getting down’ with the lingo. Our first few days here were all about using the grippy groomers to improve our technique and work out any bad habits. We all saw improvements in our own and each others' skiing, prompting lots of whoops and high fives – not very British I know but like I said, I’m ‘getting down’ with all the cool Canadian stuff. Then the storm hit and we all woke up to POW! Our instructor Dwight led us around the mountain like a pow pied piper, finding the best spots for some solitary tree skiing. I thought that tree skiing wouldn’t really be my thing; confined spaces where the trees often dictate your turn patterns didn’t seem too appealing. How foolish I was – tree skiing is EPIC! The amount of whooping and high fives doubled, and at the end of the day we all had very tired and very happy smiles on our faces, as we indulged in a little après ski! I like to think I've had a lot of experience skiing in European resorts and what strikes me as different here is the sheer amount of snow. There's no accidentally skiing over little (or big) rocks here, the pistes are long and the snow is deep and grippy. There is also so much less definition between 'on-piste' and 'off-piste', Fernie purposely keeps big parts of the ski area un-pisted so that everyone can enjoy the deep snow and fun of powder skiing, in a safe environment. There is so much more to ski, I don't think two weeks is going to be long enough to know the mountain back to front, oh well - I'll just have to come back next year!

The Nonstop adventure thus far...

I’ve been here a week and I’ve experienced blue skies (developing a nice goggle tan now), big powder days, hockey matches, bars that look like taxidermists, meeting loads of great people, improved my skiing and I’ve still got another week to go!

Keep up to date with our Twitter (@nonstopsnow) and Facebook feeds to read about my second week adventures. Hopefully they’ll be no more terribly interesting truck stories...