After the previous exhausting day I slept late at Fairmont Hot Springs and rolled into the Kimberley Ski Area at 10:30AM. I chose to go here because:
1) It breaks up the drive from Fairmont to Fernie.
2) I wanted a mellow day between cat ski tours.
3) Why not rack up area #144 while I'm in the neighborhood?
Kimberley faces north-to-east at an elevation range of about 4,000 - 6,000 feet. The front high speed chair is 1,900 vertical of an average low intermediate pitch but with some rollers to make them more interesting. The other 2 chairs (each 1,100 vertical) are north of the high speed and serve terrain generally of upper intermediate pitch. It's all cut trails with a few areas where they have thinned the naturally dense trees for glading. The ungroomed trails were all mogulled as it hadn't snowed much recently.
Snowfall is modest, probably similar to Panorama at less than 200 inches. However Canadian sun is weak at this time of year and the snow was dry with no melt freeze as there is no south facing terrain. There was hardpack only on the bottom 200 feet or so which has snowmaking because everyone funnels in there at the end of the day or to use the high speed lift. There were very few rocks, but there was quite a bit of vegetation on the mogul runs and even on a couple of the groomers on Tamarack, the lower of the backside chairs.
Kimberley is as advertised a "family area" and there were a lot of kids there, though I was told that they were local kids there for P.E. at this time of year. Which I believe since most of them were beginner/low intermediate. There's a lot of real estate at the base despite the remote location.
RCR owns both Fernie and Kimberley and does an effective marketing job of getting travel bookings. For example the 2 Danes I skied with at Golden were booked into Kimberley for 2 nights even though it's clearly not their type of area. I told them to ski just one day there, ski Fernie the day they are moving their lodging base and consider at day at Castle while in Fernie.
Nothing wrong with Kimberley on an absolute scale, but given the regional context and remote location I do wonder. I respect the appeal of "family oriented" resorts, but Big White and Sun Peaks set the standard there In B.C. IMHO.
1) It breaks up the drive from Fairmont to Fernie.
2) I wanted a mellow day between cat ski tours.
3) Why not rack up area #144 while I'm in the neighborhood?
Kimberley faces north-to-east at an elevation range of about 4,000 - 6,000 feet. The front high speed chair is 1,900 vertical of an average low intermediate pitch but with some rollers to make them more interesting. The other 2 chairs (each 1,100 vertical) are north of the high speed and serve terrain generally of upper intermediate pitch. It's all cut trails with a few areas where they have thinned the naturally dense trees for glading. The ungroomed trails were all mogulled as it hadn't snowed much recently.
Snowfall is modest, probably similar to Panorama at less than 200 inches. However Canadian sun is weak at this time of year and the snow was dry with no melt freeze as there is no south facing terrain. There was hardpack only on the bottom 200 feet or so which has snowmaking because everyone funnels in there at the end of the day or to use the high speed lift. There were very few rocks, but there was quite a bit of vegetation on the mogul runs and even on a couple of the groomers on Tamarack, the lower of the backside chairs.
Kimberley is as advertised a "family area" and there were a lot of kids there, though I was told that they were local kids there for P.E. at this time of year. Which I believe since most of them were beginner/low intermediate. There's a lot of real estate at the base despite the remote location.
RCR owns both Fernie and Kimberley and does an effective marketing job of getting travel bookings. For example the 2 Danes I skied with at Golden were booked into Kimberley for 2 nights even though it's clearly not their type of area. I told them to ski just one day there, ski Fernie the day they are moving their lodging base and consider at day at Castle while in Fernie.
Nothing wrong with Kimberley on an absolute scale, but given the regional context and remote location I do wonder. I respect the appeal of "family oriented" resorts, but Big White and Sun Peaks set the standard there In B.C. IMHO.