Deep dive to find my 2007 post, before Revelstoke opened.
Revelstoke has not lived up to the hype. Here's a rather critical thread with much of the criticism coming from Canadian locals:
http://www.epicski.com/t/145782/revelst ... a-new-lift
In terms of snowfall Revelstoke averages ~350 inches at 6,400 feet. That's nice in resort context but far from the 485 inches a few miles away at Mt. Fidelity near Rogers' Pass. The lower mountain gets a lot of rain and faces west, and a good chunk of the upper terrain faces south. The north facing terrain is good but difficult to lap. The reality is that most of the time Revy is a 2,000 vertical mountain with somewhat tedious layout because most people don't want to ski the variable snow lower down. As the Epic thread title says, more lifts would help but current management has no intention to build any.
Valemount and Jumbo are similar resorts in design. The design of both comes from Oberto Oberti, the same guy who built Kicking Horse and botched its lift layout. Hopefully he has learned something. The primary vision for both resorts seems to be providing summer glacier skiing comparable to several areas in the Alps. He is correct this will be unique in North America, but I have no idea how much extra tourism this will drive. Valemount is 1 hour 20 minutes from Jasper, which already attracts summer tourism, so maybe.
As far as winter is concerned, neither Kicking Horse nor Revelstoke is a smashing financial success. Thus the local Canadians have some skepticism about these projects. Jumbo strikes me as more accessible, just up the road from Panorama, which is daytrippable from Banff/Lake Louise. Valemount is close to Jasper/Marmot,which is a weekend destination for Edmonton locals. Edmonton to Valemount is 5 hours. Kamloops to Valemount is 3 hours. Kamloops is touted as the gateway airport, but it's a small time airport vs. Kelowna, 2 hours further away.
I was personally in favor of Jumbo, and I never figured out why it became a poster boy of environmental opposition while Valemount being proposed by the same developer in the same type of terrain seems to be sailing through. At any rate I'd like to see one of these glacier resorts built, but the economic case for building two of them seems very weak.
The 300+ page report pdf for Valemount touts trail distribution very much in the mainstream of intermediate concentration. They say advanced/experts shouldn't worry because there are lots of trees and challenging off-piste. I'll reserve judgment on that until I see it.
I was fairly impressed by the weather analysis. One might expect bitter cold that far north, but winter temps seem to be about 7F warmer than Lake Louise/Sunshine. When I drove that route in 2007 I observed that temperature rise between Jasper and Valemount on the way to Mike Wiegele at Blue River. As far as the 550 inches of snowfall at 5,900 feet are concerned, I'd like to track that number down.
1) I've searched periodically for data from the cat/heli operators and either found it too sketchy (missing too many days) or being from a lodge elevation too low. 5,900 is a good elevation, similar to Mustang or Mt. Fidelity, if the data is credible.
2) It's as a big leap to assume snowfall is the same at Valemount as Cariboo Lodge as it is to assume Revelstoke is the same as Mt. Fidelity. When Revelstoke opened it was claiming Mt. Fidelity level snowfall and more. There are some good reasons to explain Revelstoke's discrepancy but I have no idea whether we should expect Valemount and Cariboo Lodge to be the same. The developers are confident enough to claim no snowmaking will be needed.
