Western View

Reading Time: 3 minutes by GEORGE KOCH in Winter 2018 issue “Things are back to perfect now that most of the bloody tourists have effed off.” The place was St. Anton, Austria. The time […]

Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s not your average night at an average Royal Canadian Legion. And definitely not a typical public meeting to tell the locals about a gigantic ski resort development proposed for […]

Reading Time: 5 minutes North America’s larger ski resorts are often thought of as cash-generating mechanisms for bloodless corporate interests, but in many cases they’re operated by individuals for whom the mountain is something […]

Reading Time: 5 minutes “Don’t be silly! You’d be mad to drive all that way.” _By GEORGE KOCH My friend Matty from Portland, Oregon, was screeching at the news that I was planning to drive from […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes By George Koch in Fall 2013 issue The Blackcomb groomer was chock-a-block with the usual peak-Christmas-holiday rainbow of skiing and boarding styles, velocities and attentiveness, and I was applying all […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes by George Koch in Western View from Winter 2012 issue As an international ski writer who spends virtually all winter on the slopes (it’s charming how many people I meet think that’s not […]

Reading Time: 5 minutes Sunshine Village’s firing last winter of seven ski patrollers, including two of its senior-most personnel, hit the skiing world like a string of explosives shattering a cornice. The appearance of heavy-handed ski resort owners […]

Reading Time: 6 minutes Several readers responded to my article of two years earlier (Is it all doom and gloom? – Fall 2007) that had circumspectly raised questions about (okay, joyously heaped scorn upon) […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes This winter the usual early-season snows largely bypassed Whistler- Blackcomb even as Victoria and Vancouver suffered havoc. Extended cold, a rain crust, a dangerous layer of faceted crystals and lastly […]

Reading Time: 3 minutes Alert readers will recall my chronicling of the Kicking Horse story since it began as a glimmer in the eye of Vancouver skier-visionary Oberto Oberti. I was an instant convert […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes Helicopters stood in silence, flags fluttered and people milled about on the broad plateau beneath Saddle Mountain, chatting or munching smoked salmon and other treats from a vast buffet spread […]

Reading Time: 6 minutes A ski helmet first went onto my head way back in 2000, when helmets were just this side of exotica. So why does the hectoring of helmet zealots for mandatory […]