A bear with her two cubs! It got a little too close for comfort to Patrick & I when we were relaxing in the garden. 

Oh the hard life, sunning in an unseasonal Vancouver.  

Is that a 1inch screw in your leg? 

Well thats just about it...

H has just about said it all apart from the fact she's been great looking after me and doing all the driving since the Thursday of Thickness or The day of Stupidity was upon us.

We now have to take it easy without going mental, so a couple of good books and a couple of videos could be in order. Lots of positive thinking and some more cerebral activities instead of the gung ho extreme sports.

If anyone has any ideas about things we could do whilst recuperating just post a comment, all ideas welcome.

On the Road to Recovery.

So we finally got an appointment for Patrick to see a doctor who specialises in feet and ankles. The appointment was scheduled for 4pm but he finally rocked up 2 and a half hours later. On the positive side he certainly seemed to know his stuff. After seeing P's x-rays he announced that surgery would be required and that it could be done there and then. Eeek. There wasn't much time for Patrick to get his head round the idea. Ligaments on either side of his foot had been torn as well as a weakening of the ligament connecting the tibia and fibia. All that is on top of the fracture of the talus dome. Dr Bagoo's plan was to vacum out the bits of bone to prevent further injury and then to screw together his fibia and tibia to allow the ligaments to repair themselves.

So Patrick was whipped away from me by the nurses and then 3 hours later it was all over and he was ready to come home! Amazing. So now we are back at Todd & Kelly's and P is spending most of his time in the lazy boy with his foot racked up on lots of pillows. He counts down the hours till he can take his next painkiller and I have no idea how Patrick will cope with doing nothing, but one thing is for sure, it will involve lots of ice cream!

In the meantime we can plan our trip down the American coast. I think climbing will be put on hold in favour of trips to the Sonoma and Napa Valleys. Mmmm, booze & crutches?

Oops. I've done it again..

...I've gone and fractured a bone in my right ankle. Nothing brave or exciting just sheer stupidity has led me to this predicament. We were waiting for a ferry to get to Red Mtn to see friends and do our last days boarding before returning to Vancouver when I jumped off an embankment onto the beach. This turned out to be a lot further and harder than I anticipated (this does assume conscious decisions were being made!) Upon landing lots of pain and swearing ensued, H ran over trying to work out what I'd done and how. She couldn't believe it when I told her. It's cropped up a few times since! We hobbled back to the van where I developed mild shock. H drove to Nelson, a town on the way to our planned destination, where we decided to go to the Hospital as the ankle in question was getting bigger by the minute. We saw a very nice doctor called Rob, only after having the nurse from hell to start with. Rob was extremely honest and after looking at the x-rays told us he wasn't sure what was wrong! We saw him the next day after he'd had the Radiologist look at the x-rays and were informed I had a mild fracture of the Talus dome (a lump of bone which the Tibia and Fibia rest on.) We've now been referred to an Orthopedic Surgeon in Vancouver and the insurance people are playing ball. We're currently in a small town called Osoyoos, which grows lots of fruit in the summer and sits on the bank of a very large frozen lake. Above all don't worry we're both well and taking it easy otherwise. We will keep you posted and fingers crossed we will still make it to Mexico.

Mmmm - We need to get Cynthia one of these. 

Sunday was spent relaxing in our African themed suite. Luxury. And in true sophisticated american stylee we celabrated with a Mac Donalds. 

This is where we took a wrong turning - don't trust Patrick with route finding.

Oooh, me again. This ones for my mum. 

and another. 

Photos to prove that we do actually go boarding 

Time to leave

Here's a few photos to show you what we have been up to recently. Tomorrow we leave Fernie. It will be an early start as we drive to Kimberly for a days boarding then drive to Red Mountain to meet up with some friends. Despite our moans about the lack of snow we have and an awsome time and shall miss our new found Fernie Friends.

But I feel the sunbaked beaches of Baja calling...

Pick up Sticks gets serious 

Once in a lifetime.

We'll the time has come for us to cast ourselves adrift in Cynthia and see where the rest of our plans take us. We've finally come to the end of our time in Fernie and now need to push on back to Vancouver and head on down to the sun in San Diego and then on to Mexico. We've had a great time in Fernie and although the snow has not been up to it's usual standard we've still had a lot of fun. Our boarding has improved considerably as has our general competence on the hill. We've made some good friends in the time we've been here, an honourable mention needs to go to Emma who has been a superstar and great to know. Photo's to follow. A special big up to the people of Fernie who take the influx of seasonal folk mostly in their stride. We had some great experiences but possibly spent more time in the pub than we should.

"News Flash, winter found alive after extensive police search."

It's true folks, Winter has been found alive after an extensive and gruelling search of the mountains surrounding Fernie B.C. At first some clouds got in the way but after 12hrs of snowfall winter was found alive and apparently unhurt, in fact it dumped 50cm of fresh powder on the ski hill over the weekend just gone. H and I went boarding on Sunday in blue skies with falling snow (how does that work?) The mountain is back in condition and we got a couple of amazing runs in untracked gladed meadows before the rest of the ski hill was tracked out. The hill is now back to the condition it was in when the 'Rain of Wrath' hit us on the 18th. Joy has returned to our lives it's just a shame we have to leave now! Oh the irony!

We've decided to stay an extra week, more because we're trying to get our B.C driving licences sorted out in Fernie rather than Vancouver. It's incredibly hard to be organised when you have no constraints like work to keep you focused. Unsuprisingly we've left it all to the last minute and we have to find somewhere else to stay as someone is moving into our spot at Snow Valley. We have a number of options though so no real stress...

On a more sober not, I've managed to hurt my shoulder rather badly. Crashed into the ground at speed shoulder first when a jump I hit didn't go quiet as expected. Heard/felt a sharp crack and my shoulder felt like it had been bathed in boiling water for a moment. I've got full movement so nothing really to worry about although it hurts like hell at certain points. Not sure what's wrong with it and haven't been to the doctors yet, it's been 5 days now and there's no real improvement. H has been great putting up with my moans, 'it hurts', 'well go to the doctors' you get the idea.

We have a big backcountry excursion planned for the weekend so we should have an exciting report and loads of good photo's to put up of ourselves and our friends. I'm very excited about the prospect, lets hope it snows some before then. More soon...

On a more positive note

We both enjoyed a good days boarding today. Made the most of a bad job and just did laps on a the Whitepass chair. We learnt where all the nice little places to do pops were and tried tricks we hadn't really done before. There was even a little dusting of snow yesterday up the top of the hill. Fingers crossed there may be more

Ooops...

Fernie lift - where has all the snow gone?