Kicking Horse, BC - 1/26/2005

Pictures and video are below.

Helen and I rode together on 1/26. We liked Kicking Horse a whole lot... the upper half of this area is awesome. The lower half left a lot to be desired, mostly because the conditions were so awful. I did not get a good sense for what the lower half of the area would be like with better snow, but it doesn't matter. The top half is worth going back for again and again. Oh, and rather than tons of tourists on a weekday, it seemed like mostly locals.

The Layout: Kicking Horse Mountain Resort is located just outside of Golden, BC. It's a reasonably sized ski area with 2,750 acres of terrain, 4,133 ft of vertical, and a top elevation of 8,033 ft. Travel time to Kicking Horse from Lake Louise was about an hour and a half, even accounting for the one-lane sections of the TC1 and getting stuck behind trucks.

The top of the area is fantastic, with steep bowls, chutes, and trees everywhere. The bottom half is like a different mountain, with more classic runs cut, and very different snow due to the lower base elevation. The lift system is passable, with most lines from the top requiring a top-to-bottom run to do them again. This is a relatively new resort that's going under a great deal of development that will change it a lot in the next few years, bringing new lifts and total terrain up to 4,005 acres.

The base area is undergoing a lot of development. They were constructing more condos, and some new ones looked like they had just opened up, as did some of the shops. The single lodge at the base is pretty nice, with plenty of seating for the size of the crowd that was there. There is a restaurant the very top that we did not go to. You can find trail maps here.

The Lift Lines: the worst lift lines we experienced were on the Stairway to Heaven chair at approximately 3 min. Basically, there were no crowds.

The Conditions: Kicking Horse got hit by the warming cycle that the rest of the Northwest got in mid January. On 1/26 there hadn't been any new snow since the warming.

The lower mountain is in terrible shape. Dirt, hay, ice, and twigs over most of it. It’s clear they’ve been pushing snow onto the main run out from the upper mountain (#10), and onto a few other runs that they want to call “open” but honestly shouldn’t. “Show Off” (#30) was the first run we saw that looked reasonably covered, about half way up the mountain. The upper slopes are covered very well with some of the best snow we experienced on this trip. The upper 1,000 ft of terrain has firm snow that you can bite an edge into. The below that, it turns icier. Below mid-mountain, it’s solid ice and twiggy.

I've been told that Kicking Horse has a relatively short ski season, and after seeing the lower slopes and comparing them to Lake Louise and Banff, I can see why that might be. The base of Kicking Horse is very low for it's location, and with the existing lift system they'll be forced to close up when they can't maintain snow on the lowest reaches.

The Terrain: We've got to start by talking about the lift system here. Kicking Horse's lift system is "under development". There are to short lifts on the bottom, which we didn't bother riding. The only way to the top is via the Golden Eagle Express gondola, which takes you 3,800 feet up from the base. From there, you can drop down to the left into Bowl Over, or to the right into Crystal Bowl towards the Stairway to Heaven lift. From the top of Stairway to Heaven, you can go back into Crystal Bowl, or down into Feuz Bowl. If you take any path that doesn't lead to Stairway to Heaven, you have to drop all the way back down to the base and take the gondola again. That's a long, long ride. A gondola mid-station would really do this place some good. You could lap the top half, and they could extend their season by downloading from the upper half of the mountain when the base is too low to ride (just like Whistler.) I'd assume it would be their #1 improvement to make next, but I have no idea what their plans are. I understand a mid-station is in their future, as well as a lift from the bottom of Bowl Over up to Terminator Ridge.

For beginners there is some terrain from each lift, but not much. There is a run from the gondola down to Stairway to Heaven. There is no green on the trail map from Stairway to Heaven, but I believe anyone could manage #37, so it's alright. After that, everything else is at the very bottom. There are lots of blues on the lower half of the mountain, and they call part of the valley below Stairway to Heaven blue, but I don't know why.

The rest of the mountain is black, ungroomed, and great. We never made it into Bowl Over, nor did we hike out CPR Ridge. We spent most of our time lapping the terrain available from Stairway to Heaven, which was pretty fun for a while. Later, we dropped of of Redemption Ridge into Feuz Bowl via Xanadu (#66), which was great until it started to funnel back towards #10. There we encountered horrible moguls of solid ice, and solid-ice avalanche debris from the permanent closure above the run out. It was so nasty that it deterred us from going back down there, and it explained why no one else was going down there. I'm sure with better snow this area would be just fine, but on our day it was hell.

The Bombs: As we got off the Stairway to Heaven chair one more time while contemplating lunch, the liftie informed us that the ski patrol was going to be detonating some charges near by, and to not be startled by the blast. It turned out they were planning to blow off the cornice overhanging the very top of Feuz Bowl with 21 bombs that they would set off at the same time. Honestly, how can you miss that? So we went and camped out along Redemption Ridge overlooking Feuz Bowl, near the top of Xanadu (66) with about twenty other spectators and one patroller who was keeping people from dropping in. The guy said he would give us a count down, so I prepared the video camera and had a snack while we waited. When the time came, though, he just turned around and said “Here we go!” I couldn’t get the camera on in time to capture the blast, but I got the slide they triggered as it rolled down into the bowl. All 21 bombs went off at almost exactly the same time, probably about 200 yards from where we were sitting. It was fantastic! Everyone cheered as the snow rolled down into the basin of the bowl. What’s interesting, though, is that they didn’t destroy the whole cornice! There are notches in it now where each bomb was, and it looks like the top of a castle wall from below. The warming cycle the entire area had last weekend really served to solidify the snow that they got last week. You can see pictures and what video I did get below.

The Food and Lodges: we ate at the main lodge in the base area. The food was good, and the lodge was really nice. Clean, well lit with lots of natural light. I had the chili, which was excellent, and the large bowl was so big that I couldn't finish it!

The Town of Golden: yea, we didn't see much of Golden. We got off the highway and followed the signs to Kicking Horse. We missed the turn at first because the sign pointed down what looked like a small residential street, and we figured it couldn't be right, but it was. That's about all we saw of Golden, BC.

Pictures and Videos: these are some of the pictures that we took that I think are more interesting from a snowboarding perspective. If you want to see the really nice artistic ones, check out Helen's site at Artgeekstudios.

The bomb pictures are below... the video of the slide is included in the video below.

This is a video from our day at Kicking Horse. It's a little over 5 min long, and it's 20mb so you'll want to right click and use "Save target as..." to save it to your local disk.

 

A view of the next range over, from the top of the gondola.

The next valley over, from the top of the gondola. You can see the low fog that hugged the ground and obscured the lovely view on the drive over from Lake Louise.

The restaurant at the top of the gondola.

A view of the top end of Crystal Bowl from the Stairway to Heaven lift.

An entrance to Feuz Bowl from Redemption Ridge.

The next peak over, on the other side of Feuz Bowl. I suspect that will be in bounds one day :)

A nice view from the top of the Stairway to Heaven lift.

A nice view from the top of the Stairway to Heaven lift.

The top of Stairway to Heaven from the gondola. The little black dots on the bumped face below the top of the lift are skiers descending the mogul field.

This is a view of the ridge at the top of Bowl Over from near the gondola top. There is a trail along the ridge, and the smooth far line is still in bounds (#75).

Helen relaxing on the lift.

A view down Crystal Bowl from the lift.

CPR ridge, from the base of Stairway to Heaven. They have a nice fire pit down here, with deck chairs spread around it that Helen really liked.

You gotta love a ski area that has deck chairs to lounge in.

Me, dozing by the fire before heading down for the day.

There was a nice, short chute right near the top of the gondola. It's not marked on the map, but it was just before the gate to CPR ridge. Helen got some shots of me going down it from above.

The chute is in the center of the picture, just to the right of the gondola top on the left (not the restaurant, which is the building on the right.)

Conditions near the bottom. Notice the ice, hay, and weeds. It doesn't seem like the same place as the pictures above, does it?!?

At the base of the gondola. It's mostly slush over dirt here. The picture doesn't do it justice :)

Looking up the hill from the base. I suspect they push more snow from up the hill over this every night during the warm periods.

The Bombs

The following pics are of the avalanche control work that the Kicking Horse ski patrol did while we were there. We didn't get enough warning of the blast to catch the beginning of it, but you can see the slide rushing into the valley below.

The cornice they're going to blast is along the ridge to the right of the patrollers. This isn't a very good shot of it, but we were also under the impression they'd be blowing up a slightly different cornice, which we got tons of worthless pictures of :)

Here's the slide going down the hill...

... and going...

... and going...

... and going...

... and it's done. We wend right down below Helen's board here once we got the okay.