TAKE OFF… TO THE POWDER RUNWAY

Reading Time: 8 minutes

DROP INTO CANADIAN ROCKIES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT FOR THE IDEAL GATEWAY TO BIG-MOUNTAIN SKIING ALONG B.C.’S POWDER HIGHWAY 

I hate to eat and run, but having lingered too long at Pedal & Tap I have little choice. 

It’s a perplexing après-ski situation: The only taxi service in Kimberley shut down in 2022, which leaves a free BC Transit bus as the only alternative to hiking back to my accommodations at the base of the eastern Kootenay town’s namesake ski area. Trouble is, the last midweek bus leaves the town’s Bavarian-themed dining and shopping district at 8:35 p.m.

“Sharp!” reiterates the bus driver after politely denying multiple requests for a later departure from passengers arriving at the four-block pedestrian “Platzl” just after 7 p.m. “You don’t want to walk it!” he calls after us as we stroll past what’s said to be “Canada’s largest free-standing cuckoo clock.” 

If only I had paid my own timepiece more heed. Returning to the bus stop as fast as my ski-weary legs will carry me, I have neither the 64 spare seconds nor the spare loonie required to watch “Happy Hans,” the wooden yodeller, burst from his eight-metre-high chronographical prison. It’s 8:34 p.m., and the driver wasn’t kidding.

My dinner dash is a far cry from my leisurely WestJet arrival the night before. A 20-minute drive southeast of the Kimberley townsite, Canadian Rockies International Airport (YXC) must be one of the world’s closest air hubs to a major ski resort. As an alternative to driving from Calgary airport, a prop flight to YXC saved me at least three hours of travel time while building anticipation with airborne views of the snowy Rockies. YXC is also close to three other big-mountain ski areas along the eastern leg of B.C.’s famed Powder Highway — Fernie, Panorama and Kicking Horse — and gives visitors the option of renting vehicles onsite, hopping aboard the various ski shuttles that regularly pull up to the curb (as I did), or hailing the new taxi company that started serving Kimberley mere days after my March visit. Goodbye dinner dashes, hello Bavarian chocolate cake at Pedal & Tap.

The best way to explore the Powder Highway, it turns out, starts with the Powder Runway.

SUN PITS AND SUDS AT KIMBERLEY

Kimbo is often suggested as a great warm-up mountain for anyone proceeding to more vertiginous terrain at Kicking Horse, Panorama or Fernie. True as that may be, it doesn’t begin to capture what Kimberley has to offer.

Where else can skiers whip off laps of fall-line terrain of the calibre I find in the Black Forest (and off-piste Purple Forest) areas, and then end their days in a sunset-facing mountaintop sun pit? Spread across four mountain faces bordered by forested ridges and snow-covered creek beds, Kimberley is anchored by the high-speed-quad servicing North Star Mountain and its predominantly beginner and intermediate runs. The remainder of the resort’s 729 hectares are spread out over long, uninterrupted runs with pleasantly consistent pitches  and surprisingly uncrowded tree skiing.

Upon arrival at the Geezer Pit, one of its impressively bronzed denizens hands me a snowbank-chilled and very local Grist and Mash Hazy IPA. Named for its mature founders, the Geezer Pit is just one of the dozens of gathering places carved into the snow in the out-of-bounds woods atop Kimberley. Some, like the Geezer Pit, draw raucous crowds of locals and visitors who have followed the directions of friends and lifties. Others are more serene (or even romantic) venues where friends toast sunny days that number more than 300 over an average year. Some are even occupied after the sun goes down, when the 2.5km “Main” becomes one of the longest night-skiing runs in North America.

Just remember to follow the rules, I’m told. Rule 1: Be polite to the groomers on the way down. Rule 2: Don’t descend half-corked (or fully corked, presumably, to avoid violating Rule 1). Rule 3: What happens in the Geezer Pit stays in the Geezer Pit. 

With that in mind I do several other things that cannot be shared owing to Rule 3, trudge back to the top of the ski area proper, and whip down some gloriously groomed corduroy en route to the slopeside Stemwinder Bar & Grill. Gliding through glades and rocking raccoon eyes works up quite an appetite, after all. For all its charms, the Geezer Pit will probably never be capable of cooking up a jalapeno brie burger. 

FALL LINES AND GLUHWEIN AT PANORAMA

With boot-deep freshie having fallen overnight, I waste little time in taking the self-guided (and hike-free) “Taynton Bowl Tour.” The 5.8km route follows a sublimely snowy ridge before descending through generously spaced glades and meeting the cat track that connects Taynton’s 300 hectares of slackcountry fun to Panorama’s master-planned resort village. 

By that time, my sister and her partner from Calgary and my Ottawa-based mother have congregated at the bottom of the Mile 1 Express quad to join me in a ride up to the Hut One Café’s roomy wooden deck for some hot chocolate and elevated views of the Purcells rising over the Toby Creek Valley.

Three hours by car from Calgary and about half that from Canadian Rockies International, Pano is well-suited for family reunions like ours thanks to a wide variety of condo- and townhome-style lodgings with plenty of parking, shopping, dining and carousing options.

While the others kick back with paperbacks on the sunny balcony of our roomy suite in the 1000 Peaks Summit Lodge, my sister Kate and I hitch a ride to the Summit Quad and split our time between blues and blacks until we slide up to Summit Hut—who doesn’t love an exuberantly frosted brownie at 2,730m?—then proceed to the aptly named Sun Bowl, which is wonderfully gladed and groomed.

Having skied all of Pano’s 1,300 vertical metres and a respectable portion of its 1,200 hectares, we’re ready to complete our culinary circuit at the Elkhorn Cabin, a cozy mid-mountain refuge that pairs cups of hot gluhwein with a traditional DIY raclette of Swiss cheese melted over beds of boiled new potatoes, baby gherkins, pearl onions, thin-sliced bresaola and cranberry compote.  

Keen to soak in Canada’s largest slopeside hot pools complex, Kate takes a final sip of gluhwein before returning to the village. I have my heart set on something else, however: A $22-ride in the Monster X snowcat that traverses Outback Ridge en route to Taynton Bowl’s former heli-skiing terrain. 

I arrive at the bowl’s mountaintop gate just in time to see a pair of ski patrollers leaving the scene. The bowl closes at 2:45 p.m., and I’m two minutes late. Did I linger too long over my gluhwein? Clearly. Will the Elkhorn Cabin trade a Monster X single-ride pass for another steaming cup? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

BOOTPACKING AND BISON BURGERS AT KICKING HORSE

Hanging over the town of Golden like smoke billowing from a campfire, the four alpine bowls of Kicking Horse Mountain Resort mark the Powder Highway’s northern-most attraction, and provide perfect venues for a Helly Hansen gear-testing trip.

Watching Helly-uniformed ski patrollers drop avalanche explosives into the rocky chutes lining Bowl Over turns out to be more for show than for my immediate safety. Along with a group of pro skiers, journalists, resort staff and Helly Hansenites (the type of crowd that appreciates technical clothing), I shoulder my skis and start hiking toward the 2,400m summit of Terminator 2. Several rope- and ladder-climbs later, I butt-slide over T2’s peak, the aptly-named Super Bowl yawning below me, and ski to the resort’s southern boundary.

The pros pick the uppermost lines into the bowl but it’s the fourth point of entry, Unnecessary Roughness, that lures me in, and though it is less steep and rocky than its predecessors it pushes the tightness of my turns (and stamina of my quads) to the limit.

Combined with its lower tree-lined runs, KHMR’s 1,260m vertical drop ranks fifth in B.C. and ninth in North America. The surrounding scenery, however, is beyond compare, given that it affords high-altitude views of six national parks. This is made all the more jaw-dropping by pairing a towering bison burger with a Banded Peak Pilsner in the mountaintop Eagle’s Eye restaurant, which at 2,350m is Canada’s loftiest full-service eatery.

An unexpected après treat follows at the cliff-lined Hospital Creek Canyon just outside Golden, where a pair of 110- and 200-metre-long suspension bridges provide prime vantage points for watching the sun dip below the peaks we had just survived. 

Snugly ensconced in the Champagne Powder Shuttle as it motors from Golden to Calgary the next morning, I congratulate myself for letting others take the wheel since I landed at YXC, more or less on the shoulder of the Powder Highway. Having spent too much of the winter driving my offspring to hockey games, piano recitals and Ontario ski hills, being a passenger all week has been a welcome change.