Ski Canada chatted with some passionate locals who have had a longstanding love affair with their home hill. Blue Mountain, ON Le Massif, QC Mont-Sainte-Anne, QC Tremblant, QC Banff, AB Big White, BC Castle Mountain, BC Kicking Horse, BC Fernie, BC Mount Washington, BC Marmot Basin, AB Kimberley, BC Panorama, BC Revelstoke, BC Silver Star,… More »
From the Travel Guide 2011 issue Quit your job, move to a ski town and find a night job so you can ski every day all winter. Remember, if you don’t do it this year, you’ll only be one year older when you do. Okay, I’m paraphrasing, but in case you’re planning on taking the… More »
A few days at Vail and Beaver Creek will have you writing home about the best parts Story and photos by Marty McLennan cushy adj (informal) 1. many perks, little or no hard work 2. luxuriously styled and crafted 3. Beaver Creek. The slopeside escalator was just about to deposit me in front of the… More »
from Buyer’s Guide 2011 issue There’s $50 in my ski pants that says we can beat the $1-billion Vancouver-Whistler Olympic security dragnet. It’s a late February winter day. F-16s circle high overhead in the blue sky as we graze the aisles of a grocery store in Squamish, ambiguous European-sounding accents from Games visitors drifting out… More »
From the Travel Guide 2010 issue So I am touring the fantastic Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, overlooking Lake Geneva and surrounded by swank villas with swimming pools—perks for the lifers at the International Olympic Committee—when I meet this cute blonde. Although she was born in B.C., albeit educated in Alberta, this doll who has… More »
‘Skiing is life,” a poetic Dean Cummings once told me when I first met him almost a decade ago. At the time I agreed, and to a certain extent I still do. Yet, over the years I’ve come to realize that not everyone likes to ski. I’ve also accepted, if not completely understood, that only… More »
There’s a weird dichotomy in the way skiing markets itself. Our sport’s image is self-consciously elitist. Glitz, glam and bling. Celebrity athletes performing superhuman record-setting feats on the racecourse or off the cliff face. Resorts announcing multi-million-dollar (or half-billion-dollar) investments for ultra-modern conveyances, 300-hp snowcats, 200-room condo-hotels or Soviet-sized mountain restaurants. Super-cool tricked-out customers whisked… More »
It’s dark outside and I’m driving uphill. Transitions are one of the most exciting things about going to the ski hill. There’s always a giddy excitement whether it’s leaving the rain-soaked congestion of Vancouver for the snowy hills or entering the Rockies from the stubble ?elds west of Edmonton. Tonight’s transition ?nds its wellspring on… More »
Skiers suffer a curious seasonal dysfunction. Spring is the time of year, the poets tell us, when we are supposed to come alive with nature. But for skiers, spring is actually the beginning of the end and our spirits lie torpid and dormant through the sultry summer months. It’s now, as the green grass of… More »
Ursula, the helpful, ef?cient woman from the Swiss Tourist Board, was sitting across from us. “Have you thought about where you would like to go?” she asked me. “I’ve been thinking maybe Verbier.” She turned to my ski partner, writer and director Ken Finkleman (CBC’s The Newsroom). “And you?” Ken was leaning forward, running his… More »
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