Golden Choices
by George Koch
from Winter 2011 issue
For hardcore skiers, this B.C. town offers a tasty triple scoop of cat, heli and resort skiing
photo: HENRY GEORGI
My best skiing memories are of storms. Maybe it’s because virtually nobody’s out and about, maybe it’s that added frisson of existing on the edge of something or other, perhaps it’s the aura of mystery created by the fog and swirling snow. Or maybe it’s the sheer surprise, an unexpected free bonus gift abruptly ending a cycle of hard bumps and icy groomers. One way or another, I couldn’t believe my good fortune in late March of last season, arriving at Kicking Horse after a long Rockies snow drought and pounding powdery laps with one of the resort’s pinnacle skiers, Andy Walton.
Andy spends late seasons heli-guiding
up in Alaska and the rest of the winter in
Golden guiding and teaching hardcore ski lessons through the resort’s Big Mountain
Centre. Having skied Kicking Horse since its
transformation from the Whitetooth ski hill 10
years earlier, I thought I knew the mountain.
But Andy had a mental map of every twist
and hidden pocket in the tortuous topography
spilling off the three great ridges—CPR,
Redemption and Terminator (now T1)—framing
the big alpine bowls that Kicking Horse has
made its skiing world signatures. Andy spoke
incessantly of “blown-in snow.” Where other
resorts figuratively (and perhaps literally)
shovel extra snow onto their weather plots, at
Kicking Horse it’s the opposite. What gathers in
upper bowls and chutes is double or triple the
recorded and reported snow depth.
We exited the resort’s famous full-vertical
gondola to be pummelled by inch-sized flakes
hurtling past our faces, the wind ripping
them across the ridgetop then punching them
downslope into the ranked rock-lined gullies
beneath CPR Ridge. You couldn’t even see the
Eagle’s Eye (Frommer’s review) restaurant barely 50 metres away.
Andy and I slid along the top until we found
a line with enough rocks and trees to provide
definition. “People often have a hard time
comparing notes about where they’ve been
skiing,” yelled Andy over the storm. I thought
he was talking about the featureless murk, but
he continued, “Most of these lines have at least
four names: the ski patrol’s technical term,,
traditional names from the old ski touring era,
another set of nicknames from today’s young
freeriders and, lastly, the official trail map name,
which itself has been evolving.”
By the next lap our previous tracks were
virtually unrecognizable. It seemed as if we
were sharing the whole mountain with about
30 people. The day became a succession of
5,000-vertical-foot circuits: CPR to the Stairway
to Heaven quad, perhaps a short lap back
to the chair down the newly gladed area on
the frontside, then one of the innumerable
Feuz Bowl lines. As on CPR, traversing along
Redemption Ridge shortens the fall line but
brings progressively more trees and rocks to see
by. One tip: if you’re not intent on dropping into
one of the uppermost lines, you can get some
fall-line turns down Blue Heaven, then veer hard
left and make a flatter, lower and less-ccrowded
traverse than by staying on the ridgetop like
most people. By the third or fourth lap there
was enough new snow that we were actually
breaking off little sluffs in the gullies, creating a
bottomless-powder effect by skiing along within
them.
The day’s pinnacle run was a line with only
one or two names, because it’s not on the trail
map and it wouldn’t have been skied n the old
days. You traverse along Redemption Ridge and
traverse some more, resisting the urge to drop
in sooner. You thread the needle between closed
zones, bootpack a few steps, take a few ginger
turns to avoid toppling into the abyss, then
hook hard left. And there you have it: a perfect
steep fall-line gully that’s almost never skied.
Today the overall tourism offering is much more varied and sophisticated summer as well as winter
The construction of Kicking Horse a decade ago
became the coming-out party for Golden. The
resort and the historical railway and logging
town have evolved in symbiosis. The area’s
recreation was always phenomenal, but the
amenities were on the rustic side. Trying to dine
with enjoyment after 7:00 pm, say, wasn’t
easy. Today the overall tourism offering is much
more varied and sophisticated summer as well
as winter. One evening, photographer Henry Georgi, Colorado pro skier Sven Brunso and I
had a phenomenal dinner at The Island, a new
restaurant in a log building beside the Kicking
Horse River. All kinds of other places have
opened as well, while some of the pre-existing
establishments have evolved with the times.
Up at the resort is Corks, a great if slightly
out-of-the-way place in the basement of the
Copper Horse Lodge, which serves phenomenal
tapas in a nice près-ski atmosphere. And for
down-home comfort and informality, it’s hard
to beat the Auberge Kicking Horse B&B, run
by Henry’s friend Marie-France (M-F) Lessor,
which has housed skiers from around the world.
The journey to Golden is also slowly becoming
easier, as the unconscionably drawn-out
upgrades to the Trans-Canada Highway are at
last making themselves felt.
Two nights later the storm broke and the
following morning every sentient being in the
Columbia Valley with anything beyond barrel
staves to slide on materialized at the Kicking
Horse base area. It was powder-crazed mayhem
from ages 8 to 80. Although the obvious lines
were trashed almost the instant they opened, there was great skiing all day long.
Thanks to Andy’s two days of previous storm-bound tutelage, navigating in dazzling March sunlight was a snap, and I found numerous tricky stashes that remained unruined even on a huge powder day. The best run of the day, though, was perhaps so obvious it went overlooked: right down the middle of the main line of Whitewall at the top of Stairway to Heaven, called Prosperity. The entry was packed but as soon as I ducked under some rocks I had 60 cm of blower right down the face.
photo: DYLAN PAGE
Henry and Sven later peeled off to hike the shoulder of Terminator Ridge and ski into Super Bowl, while the rest of the group melted away. Last season Super Bowl was a much-travelled though past-the-boundary sidecountry zone with an easy route back into the ski area. This year it’s officially inbounds, along with the peaklet beyond known as T2. Some local afficionados might be choked at the resort’s move, but Super Bowl was an accident waiting to happen – easily accessible from the resort and frequently skied by people with neither avalanche transceivers nor knowledge, yet it remained uncontrolled. Now it should be safe for all.
Canadian Olympic Skicross team member Dave Duncan and I meanwhile went off in search of the original glades that existed in the Whitetooth era. Sliding past the original Whitetooth day lodge (now the resort’s admin
building) and up to the ancient, deserted
Pioneer double chair, we looked at each other
and spontaneously exclaimed “Hot Tub Time
Machine!” It really was like stepping into
another era. The chairlift creaked and moaned
arduously up the fall line. Yet the old glades
were super-fun and the lower cruiser underneath
the chairlift was perfectly groomed. The ’70s
really were great!
The Pioneer Chair session triggered further
reflection on how much Golden has evolved
over the past decade. To those drawn by Kicking
Horse’s rugged terrain, long steep slopes,
physically demanding ridgetop approaches, tight
entries and variable snow, their minds should
naturally be drawn to more distant, powdery
options—heli-skiing and snowcat skiing. The
Golden area has some of the best of both.
Closest by and advertising its presence
with its red Bell helicopters flying daily over
the resort is Purcell Helicopter Skiing. Some
years heli-skiing is less about the steep and
deep and more about the safe and sheltered,
and last season’s snowpack in B.C.—thin
and fickle, with nasty sliding layers—made it
one of those times. The province’s heli- and
snowcat operators remained on edge, and one
had a snowcat buried by a natural avalanche
while building a snow road. What was needed
last season was not merely treed terrain, but completely secure drop-offs and pickups.
photo: ALAIN SLEIGHER
Luckily Purcell has just such a zone in the
Bellavista drainage several ridges northwest of
the ski hill. Late last season I got to ski with
Purcell’s father-and-son owners, Rudi and Jeff
Gertsch. Our repeated laps along the gentle
open ridgetops and then down through the trees
weren’t about conquering the mountain but
about nice, enjoyable, safe skiing—and nobody
minded. The Gertsch’s have a wonderful spacious
tenure in the northern Purcells plus a chunk of
the eastern Selkirks. From Bellavista we had
absolutely staggering views of the Selkirks—a
whole other level of relief, rockiness, tortuously
twisted glaciers and seracs. The Purcells are much
more skiable, as I noticed from overhead on
the flight out, offering a friendly ratio of snow-covered
slopes to cliff walls and rocky pinnacles.
Over the decades, Purcell has made a
specialty of catering to first-time heli-skiers,
many of whom are ski-weekers staying in Banff and Lake Louise and come in by bus for the
day. Rudi and Jeff’s endless patience, delight in
imparting knowledge and friendly terrain make
it a great place to kick off one’s heli-skiing
career. But they also do private packages for
serious repeat skiers. Private groups fly right
from Kicking Horse rather than the Gertsch’s
main heli-base by the highway above Golden.
When snow stability allows, Jeff teaches steep
clinics in a heli-ski setting. And if there’s
demand, Purcell will keep on flying right into
May, which can offer some of the season’s most
exciting skiing.
As we lunched following one of our Bellavista
laps, Rudi recalled one such experience. “We
did a helicopter Haute Route,” he said. “I had
an incredibly strong group, and the late-season
conditions were unusually favourable. Most of
the other heli-operations had shut down. We
started way down in the Bugaboos, in CMH
tenure. We flew and skied our way up through
the Bugaboos and into the Bobbie Burns. The
following day we skied through the middle of
the Selkirks and over to Revelstoke. Then we
skied and heli’ed our way around the top of the
national park, across the Kinbasket Reservoir,
and then back down southward along the
Rockies back to Golden.” The multi-day epic
spanned hundreds of kilometres and totalled
well over 100,000 vertical feet of skiing, a once-in-
a-lifetime experience for the guests and, Rudi
said, one of the best weeks he’s every guided.
Every package comes with unlimited vertical
Barely half an hour’s drive northwest of Golden
is the base for another fantastic heli-operation,
Great Canadian Heli-Skiing. Operating out of
Heather Mountain Lodge just off the highway,
Great Canadian provides exclusively small-group
heli-skiing using A-Star helicopters. Owners
Greg and Maaike Porter have made it their life’s
quest to encourage ever-reluctant Canadians to
try the apex form of skiing sitting in their own
backyard. The Porters recently came up with a
heli-skiing “season’s pass” aimed at regional
skiers. Pre-paying a round sum of money earns
you a set number of days spread however you
like across the season.
Great Canadian emphasizes lots of skiing.
Every package comes with unlimited vertical,
and 17-run days occur routinely. The fly-in
approaches are generally short, and the long
drainages of the northeast Selkirks plus a chunk
of the northwest Purcells making up the Porters’ tenure allow multiple runs of untracked without
long transits. Great Canadian also has a unique
way of utilizing its two aircraft: once the total
complement of six four-skier groups start cycling
laps in the same drainage, either heli will lift
whichever group happens to arrive at the pickup.
That minimizes wait times for faster groups while
allowing others to ski at their own natural pace.
Golden is also home to one of Canada’s finest
snowcat skiing operations. Ten years ago in
January, Dale McKnight and Dan Josephson, a
pair of burly young loggers from Golden, hewed
a rough lodge and hacked some snowcat roads
into a zone of monumental terrain in a remote
new tenure 100 km north of Golden. Chatter
Creek almost instantly became the stuff of
legend: nearly 250 sq km of terrain, gigantic
runs of 3,000+ vertical feet, snowcat skiing’s
highest drop-off at nearly 10,000 feet elevation
and the only glacier skiing in snowcat country.
Plus, bien sur, the standard vast tree-skiing
slopes forming the snowcat genre’s core.
Chatter has lived up to its formidable
reputation season after season, growing to two
beautiful log lodges in addition to the original “Spruce Goose” that now houses staff. Today
Chatter runs three snowcats and accommodates
36 guests. (Plus they offer joint snowcat-heli
packages with Great Canadian.) Uniquely in the
snowcat world, one can add single-run or full-day
small-group heli-skiing accessing an even
larger surrounding area.
Adding to Chatter’s attraction is its easy
accessibility from Calgary (despite its physical
remoteness). A downtown lawyer or oilpatch
engineer can work until noon, drive out to
Golden in under three hours and be helicoptered
to the Chatter lodge for a sumptuous sit-down
dinner by about 6:00 p.m. After three or four
days of skiing, the steps are reversed and they’re
back home in Calgary by early evening. No full
days are lost to travelling. That’s been a big
source of Chatter’s success. Another is its long
season, typically early December until well into
April—the skiers stop coming well before the
snow goes. One pack of Calgary and Fernie-based
friends of mine visit Chatter every December and
have come away with year after year of great
tales of steep-and-deep tree skiing. ❄
ON THE MENU
KICKING HORSE RESORT 866/754-5425
(See Big Mountain Centre)
• Corks Restaurant and Bar
in the Copperhorse Lodge:copperhorselodge.com
• The Island::www.islandrestaurant.ca
• M–F ’s Bed &Breakfast:
• High-end catered chalet accommodation:
PURCELL HELICOPTER SKIING 877/435-4754
www.purcellhelicopterskiing.com
• Steep Clinics planned for spring 2011,,and
as snow stability allows
GREAT CANADIAN HELI-SKIING 866/424-4354
• Season ’s pass:www.canadianheli-skiing.com/
seasonpass.html
CHATTER CREEK 877/311-7199
• Heli-skiing available by the run or day
• Heli-combo with Great Canadian:
www.canadianheli-skiing.com/combos.html
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