Kicking Horse, BC - 03/26/07

[ChrisC]

Pretty bad.

Supposedly the KH developers are in it for the real estate profit and have cut corners on the ski development, planning to sell and let someone else do the upgrades. Examples cited:

2) It may be heresy on this board but KH is undergroomed. This is mostly a midmountain issue. The Calgary skiers said that old logging tree stumps would need to be removed and they didn't want to spend the money.

By both our observations in 2007 point #2 above has been corrected. We don't know about #3 because there was so much natural snow this year, but I'm skeptical. Problems #1 and #4 remain.

There was an article in Ski Canada specifically addressing this issue #2 and grooming.

I did not buy the article to quote exactly -- but essentially it said the mountain manager brought in last year had to put a priority on grooming. And is keeping at least 3 groomed highways from mid-mountain to the base.

This is what I observed too. The path under the gondola is groomed regularly. One to skiers left of the old double. And another in the middle of the two.

Anyways, I thought it was amazing for a ski magazine to acknowledge shortcomings in print. They also said Castle has 3 groomers and they were not too operable last year -- the result was bad conditions without new snow.