Tag: British Columbia

Reading Time: 4 minutes There’s a feline expression for pretty near everything you might come across on your cat-skiing journey. Catnip, the nibbly treats they keep in the snowcat while you’re skiing. Catgut, which […]

Reading Time: 2 minutes When Mount Baldy’s Brett Sweezy sat down to take his place at a seminar on the future of ski resorts at last March’s North American Snowsports Journalists Association meeting in […]

Reading Time: 8 minutes At Mustang Powder, everything reinforces this self-constructed reverie. At lift resorts, reality—crowds, traffic, concrete, roads— has a nasty way of thrusting itself into your experience. But at Mustang, deep in […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes No signs or billboards will lead the way either. It’s that kind of place. You have to want to get there. Or you have to have been there once before, […]

Reading Time: 7 minutes From the Spring 2006 issue Three men are generally credited with inventing helicopter skiing: Hans Gmoser, Herb Bleuer and Mike Wiegele. Gmoser, founder and long-time head of Canadian Mountain Holidays […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes Many, many years ago, well, in the mid-1990s, while I was studying at the University of British Columbia and escaping to Whistler four days a week each winter, I spent […]

Reading Time: 8 minutes We’re gathered around a sign that reads: “Warning! No Patrol Beyond This Point.” It’s taken us all of about an hour to attach ourselves to the local fraternity of skiers […]

Reading Time: 6 minutes This feature appeared in the December 2005 issue I can’t call it karma, because I probably didn’t deserve it, or fate, because it was hardly inevitable. So let’s stick with […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes B.C.’s business-friendly Liberal government that replaced the NDP just after I wrote the previous column has cut taxes and taken steps to restart the province’s economy. The Vancouver Island freeway, […]

Reading Time: 6 minutes It could’ve been the fourth or maybe it was the fifth yard sale that really caught my attention. Not to downplay the comical spasticity of the first few bails, but […]

Reading Time: 3 minutes I figured I’d have long been writing travel articles on riding Canada’s highest ski lifts and exploring almost 2,000 verical metres of dramatic, glaciated terrain. No such luck. Still, Vancouver […]

Reading Time: 2 minutes At the outset, the winter of 2004-05 seemed fairly typical. Shortly after Christmas, however, the weather turned unseasonably cold and dry. As a result, for a number of weeks we […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes “Last season we had some of the lowest lows you could possibly imagine,” says Andrew Rusynyk, Castle’s director of snow sports, marketing and development. “We had liftees and instructors handshovelling […]

Reading Time: 3 minutes Pot-holed to death in B.C. Welfare kills. Do they have those patronizing commercials in the East, where a cop-voice warns “Speed Kills!”? I think the evidence is stronger that welfare […]

Reading Time: 2 minutes You’ve ridden the dog. Now grab life by the horns and climb aboard the moose. Bus travel, that retro transport of choice for grannies and backpackers, is back and it’s […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes In certain social circles up and down the Rocky Mountain Trench, the long valley in southeastern B.C. that separates the Rockies from the Purcells, Selkirks and Monashees, they are known […]

Reading Time: 9 minutes It’s time again, another year and another annual insiders’ look at what makes Canadian skiing so distinguished. These pages aren’t filled with facts and stats you’ll find in brochures and […]

Reading Time: 6 minutes Prepare like a pro before tackling B.C.’s most famous West Coast Trail With mud threatening every orifice and a 25-kg pack swinging over my back like a wild chimp intent […]

Reading Time: 2 minutes While lumbering through Lot 1 for the hundredth-odd time last season, I was startled by what appeared to be a large animal rummaging through the trunk of a red Civic. […]