Today was the day for Fernie's famous, or semi famous or perhaps infamous, Powder, Peddle, Paddle race. For anyone not familiar with this, it begins with a mass start up on the Face Lift. The racers run up a short pitch to their skis and then head off into Cedar Bowl. Traditionally the first, and pretty much only, gate was over Blueberry way and from there the skiers found their way down onto the lower Cruiser cat track and out Cedar Trail to the base area. After a bad crash last year the plan was to introduce more gates in Cedar this year to keep things a bit saner. I don't know exactly what they did, but everyone did seem to make it down in one piece.
Once at the bottom the skiers hand off to bike racers who speed down the hill,
through our subdivision and down the highway to town.
At the West Fernie bridge the bicyclists hand of to paddlers who then race their kayaks or canoes back to the foot of the ski hill road. There was a lot more snow around this year than in previous years and I heard that the racers had too wade through a couple of feet of snow at the launch point. At least the landing area was relatively clear of snow, but I am sure the water was just as cold.
The final stage of the race involves running back up the ski hill road, through
the subdivision and up to the base area. This certainly has to be one of the
toughest legs and the poor participants don't even get their own 'P' in the
race name. <g> Some hardy folks do all four sections themselves and this
year the first solo man finished an amazing 8th overall out of 76 teams.
There are also awards for many other things including costumes and this can lead to some pretty scary sights. :-)
I didn't get up on the slopes today and didn't even talk to anyone about the conditions. It did snow a bit down at the house last night, but that does not necessarily mean anything.
I helped correlate the results for the PPP and thereby snagged a copy to post. There are both overall results and results by category. As far as I know these were the final results, but they should still be considered unofficial.
At 3:30 P.M. it is 5 C at the house with a mix of sun and cloud.
(Click on any picture for a larger version)
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