Canadian Rockies, January 23rd - 30th, 2005
Helen and I spent a week in the Canadian Rockies from Sunday, January 23rd thru Sunday, January 30th. We stayed in a fantastic cabin at Baker Creek Chalets about 10 minutes East of Lake Louise, Alberta on the Bow Valley Parkway (highway 1A). We went snowboarding at three resorts that we'd never been to before: Sunshine Village, Lake Louise, and Kicking Horse. All 3 were excellent ski areas, and I'd be happy to go back to all of them.
New on 2/6: two videos, one from Sunshine Village (8m), and one from Kicking Horse (20mb). These are big, so right click and use "Save target as..." to save them to your local disk.
Sunshine
Village is just outside of Banff, AB, a half hour drive from the cabin.
It's a good sized ski area, with 3,358 skiable acres, 3,514 ft of
vertical, and a top elevation of 8,954 ft. They've got a great mix of
terrain spread around the village, an excellent lift system, and nice
lodges. The terrain on Goat's Eye Mountain is especially good, with a
great mix of steeps, trees, and wide groomers. Some of the steepest
terrain at Sunshine is an easy hike skier's left off the Goat's Eye
Express, which gets you 1,900 ft of vertical on one high-speed quad.
Helen and I had a great time here, and Sunshine Village was our favorite
of the 3 areas we visited on this trip.
Lake
Louise (the ski area) is just outside of the town of Lake Louise. It's a
big ski area, with 4,200 acres of skiable terrain, 3,250 ft of vertical,
and a top elevation of 8,650 ft. The front side is pretty mellow, but
the back bowls are much steeper, with wide open bowls, chutes, and tree
runs. The lift system is reasonable, and currently undergoing changes
(they were building a gondola while we were there.) The back bowls would
clearly be epic on a big powder day, and the views from the top were
hands-down the best views ever from any ski area. It was frequently
worth just sitting in solitude on the side of the mountain and taking in
the view.
Kicking
Horse is near Golden, BC, and is about an hour and 10 min from Lake
Louise on the TC1 via Kicking Horse Pass. It's a medium-sized ski area, with
2,750
acres of terrain, 4,133 ft of vertical, and a top elevation of 8,033 ft.
The top of the area is fantastic, with steep bowls, chutes, and trees
everywhere. It would be even better on a pow day. 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 snow conditions at all 3 areas were similar on this trip. The warm weather that literally destroyed the Washington ski areas also reached into this part of BC and AB, albeit much weaker. Instead of the typical -15C weather typical for this time of year, the temperature hovered around 0C to -3C the entire time. At each area the snow at the top was firm but skiable, at the middle it ranged from hard-pack to ice, and at the bottom was slush if it was warm, and ice if it was cold. Sunshine was in the best overall shape, with Lake Louise second and Kicking Horse third. No significant snow fell the entire time we were there. On the last day we saw 2" of fresh at Sunshine Village, but that was it. We were treated to many days of blue skies and great visibility, though.
The lodging was wonderful, and we would highly recommend staying at Baker Creek Chalets. The cabin was clean, warm, and cozy, the staff was extremely helpful and nice, and the food at their restaurant was out of this world.
All-in-all we both had a great time. I'd love to go back to all 3 of these ski areas in the future, especially during a good snow season.