Western View
Fly or Drive?
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 […]
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Ski it or text it?
Reading Time: 4 minutesBy 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 […]
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Cat vs. Heli: We All Win
Reading Time: 4 minutesby 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 […]
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Mountain Forecast: firings with periods of litigation
Reading Time: 5 minutesSunshine 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 […]
Read more »In science we trust
Reading Time: 6 minutesSeveral 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) […]
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Getting the message across
Reading Time: 4 minutesThis 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 […]
Read more »Golden Dreams
Reading Time: 3 minutesAlert 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 […]
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The Making of a Mountain
Reading Time: 4 minutesHelicopters 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 […]
Read more »Helmets: Free choice or social obligation?
Reading Time: 6 minutesA 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 […]
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Is it all doom and gloom?
Reading Time: 9 minutesIt was a magical January day with Mica Heli Guides high in the Rocky Mountains northeast of Revelstoke. We were pausing between huge pitches to gaze at the mountains ringing […]
Read more »Skiing within your budget
Reading Time: 5 minutesThere’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 […]
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