Sunday NASJA members had the option to ski Red or Whitewater. I opted for the latter as I had arrived early at Red and had skied it more on previous trips. A year ago Whitewater bought the old High Noon chair from Vail and installed it for 2,000 vertical on the backside of its Summit chair, doubling lift served terrain.
Whitewater has the highest lift served snowfall of the interior B.C areas I track by a modest margin over Fernie and Revelstoke, but its high base elevation of 5,400 feet (now 4,850 with the new lift) is much higher so conditions are very reliable. There was not a trace of crust or melt/freeze anywhere on the mountain.
It was Sunday and the parking lots filled up and the day lodge was overflowing at lunch. Nonetheless the liftline on Summit never exceeded 5 minutes and Silver King and Glory Ridge chair had virtually no lines. A sufficient traverse could yield a few untracked turns in Catch Basin.
Or beyond Claim Jumper far skier's left from the new lift.
I did ski a few morning runs with ski host Heidi, who won some Canadian mogul events a few years ago. In the afternoon Clovis showed me some of the steeper tree runs on both the Summit and Glory Ridge lifts. Some of the backside tree runs feed into Ramble On here.
15,300 vertical, about 3K of powder in out of the way places.
Most of the NASJA people arrived Monday, well timed with 5 inches new snow overnight. Tahoe Broadcaster Curtis Fong and Portland photographer Randy Boverman make an interesting fashion combination.
With the usual Great Grey North weather and fresh snow, not many pictures. 5 inches isn't all that much but the subsurface was very soft so it skied quite well. Karl Weatherly in the Dynamite trees.
Backside trees
After an energetic morning and excellent lunch I chatted with one of Whitewater's backcountry guides for a while and took just a few more runs. Total 14,200 vertical, about 8K of powder.
One unusual feature at Whitewater is the quality of its cafeteria food. It's a typical day lodge for a basic area like this but it would not be out of line to compare its food in quality to the Deer Valley benchmark. In every other way Whitewater is the antithesis of Deer Valley: no real estate, all natural snow and a lot of it, 3 conventional lifts all purchased secondhand from other areas, mostly steep and ungroomed terrain. It's not as tough as Red Mt. because the sustained steep fall lines are not as long, the trees are often more spaced and the snow is usually more forgiving.
NASJA stayed in the historic Hume Hotel in Nelson. It was built first in the late 19th century, had its heyday in the Art Deco era, decayed for a while but has been completely restored by new ownership since 1980. It has several bars and restaurants and a jazz club in the basement that attracts notable acts traveling between Vancouver and Calgary. We had a very interesting hour tour on the second night where I forgot to bring the camera. #-o On the first night we toured the local museum housed in the former city hall. It has permanent display detailing the history of the area plus traveling art or photographic exhibitions. The photography exhibition was from WWII internment camps of American and Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry. The Canadian camps were mostly in the area just north of Nelson.
At the dinner after the Hume hotel tour I had a chance to chat with reps from a few of the cat and heli operators in the Nelson area. Nelson and B.C. tourism are promoting mixed resort/cat/heli trips like I have been doing for the past 15 years. The reality is that only a few of these places are set up to handle day trippers easily. One of these is Valhalla, which socal visited recently but was not represented at the dinner. Stellar Heliskiing runs an A-Star (that means just 4 skiers per group) out of Kaslo, about an hour northeast of Nelson, and courts the day skier market. Baldface was there, along with Selkirk Wilderness, Retallack and White Grizzly.
Selkirk Wilderness was the first snowcat operation in 1976 and runs only 5 day tours Monday-Friday. I skied Retallack in its early days in 2000. It has since quadrupled its terrain and added a second cat. Retallack's lodge is on the pass between Kaslo and New Denver. Retallack usually does multiday tours but will accept day skiers on standby. White Grizzly has a somewhat flexible schedule, runs just one cat and warns explicitly (their sticker reads Ski Good or Eat Wood) that only very experienced skiers need apply. Their runs are ~3,000 vertical, mostly in the trees. Karl Weatherly has been there 3 times and recommends White Grizzly highly. Selkirk Wilderness and White Grizzly are in the Meadow Creek area north of Kaslo and east of Great Northern, where I skied in 2005.
Whitewater has the highest lift served snowfall of the interior B.C areas I track by a modest margin over Fernie and Revelstoke, but its high base elevation of 5,400 feet (now 4,850 with the new lift) is much higher so conditions are very reliable. There was not a trace of crust or melt/freeze anywhere on the mountain.
It was Sunday and the parking lots filled up and the day lodge was overflowing at lunch. Nonetheless the liftline on Summit never exceeded 5 minutes and Silver King and Glory Ridge chair had virtually no lines. A sufficient traverse could yield a few untracked turns in Catch Basin.
Or beyond Claim Jumper far skier's left from the new lift.
I did ski a few morning runs with ski host Heidi, who won some Canadian mogul events a few years ago. In the afternoon Clovis showed me some of the steeper tree runs on both the Summit and Glory Ridge lifts. Some of the backside tree runs feed into Ramble On here.
15,300 vertical, about 3K of powder in out of the way places.
Most of the NASJA people arrived Monday, well timed with 5 inches new snow overnight. Tahoe Broadcaster Curtis Fong and Portland photographer Randy Boverman make an interesting fashion combination.
With the usual Great Grey North weather and fresh snow, not many pictures. 5 inches isn't all that much but the subsurface was very soft so it skied quite well. Karl Weatherly in the Dynamite trees.
Backside trees
After an energetic morning and excellent lunch I chatted with one of Whitewater's backcountry guides for a while and took just a few more runs. Total 14,200 vertical, about 8K of powder.
One unusual feature at Whitewater is the quality of its cafeteria food. It's a typical day lodge for a basic area like this but it would not be out of line to compare its food in quality to the Deer Valley benchmark. In every other way Whitewater is the antithesis of Deer Valley: no real estate, all natural snow and a lot of it, 3 conventional lifts all purchased secondhand from other areas, mostly steep and ungroomed terrain. It's not as tough as Red Mt. because the sustained steep fall lines are not as long, the trees are often more spaced and the snow is usually more forgiving.
NASJA stayed in the historic Hume Hotel in Nelson. It was built first in the late 19th century, had its heyday in the Art Deco era, decayed for a while but has been completely restored by new ownership since 1980. It has several bars and restaurants and a jazz club in the basement that attracts notable acts traveling between Vancouver and Calgary. We had a very interesting hour tour on the second night where I forgot to bring the camera. #-o On the first night we toured the local museum housed in the former city hall. It has permanent display detailing the history of the area plus traveling art or photographic exhibitions. The photography exhibition was from WWII internment camps of American and Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry. The Canadian camps were mostly in the area just north of Nelson.
At the dinner after the Hume hotel tour I had a chance to chat with reps from a few of the cat and heli operators in the Nelson area. Nelson and B.C. tourism are promoting mixed resort/cat/heli trips like I have been doing for the past 15 years. The reality is that only a few of these places are set up to handle day trippers easily. One of these is Valhalla, which socal visited recently but was not represented at the dinner. Stellar Heliskiing runs an A-Star (that means just 4 skiers per group) out of Kaslo, about an hour northeast of Nelson, and courts the day skier market. Baldface was there, along with Selkirk Wilderness, Retallack and White Grizzly.
Selkirk Wilderness was the first snowcat operation in 1976 and runs only 5 day tours Monday-Friday. I skied Retallack in its early days in 2000. It has since quadrupled its terrain and added a second cat. Retallack's lodge is on the pass between Kaslo and New Denver. Retallack usually does multiday tours but will accept day skiers on standby. White Grizzly has a somewhat flexible schedule, runs just one cat and warns explicitly (their sticker reads Ski Good or Eat Wood) that only very experienced skiers need apply. Their runs are ~3,000 vertical, mostly in the trees. Karl Weatherly has been there 3 times and recommends White Grizzly highly. Selkirk Wilderness and White Grizzly are in the Meadow Creek area north of Kaslo and east of Great Northern, where I skied in 2005.
