You might remember seeing Alberta’s presently closed Fortress Mountain as an alpine backdrop in the 2010 Leonardo DiCaprio blockbuster Inception. Or maybe you just dreamt that you did. If you didn’t see the film, you won’t remember the scene (or get the joke), but buck up, because there might be a sequel in the works. Not a sequel to the film, but the resort.

Fortress is an hour-and-a-quarter west of Calgary, surrounded by provincial parks. It opened in 1967 and closed in 2004. A new group signed a lease with the Alberta government in 2010 and for the last five years, it’s been the setting for the cat-ski operation KPOW! that takes about 1,000 skiers a year through the alpine bowls and extant runs.

Thomas Heath, the group’s managing director, says a new master plan was submitted in June but the province has recently asked for a condensed version (Alberta doesn’t have a dedicated policy for resort development, like B.C. does). If it’s approved, the plan to build five new chairlifts and a new day lodge will mean Calgary skiers will have another place to go for a gay old time on-slope—Fortress was also a filming location for Brokeback Mountain.

by IAN MERRINGER in the December 2016 issue

Ski Canada Magazine

Your cat-ski choice: a week up in the alpine or just pick a day…or two.

t’s an age-old question. Some believe the Mayans were the first to ask it. Herodotus, the ancient Greek record-keeper, may have even alluded to it in his epic text, The Histories. More recently, prime ministers, presidents and dictators alike have scratched their heads over the immeasurably dire quandary: If I go cat-skiing, do I want to tack a day or two onto a resort ski trip, or blow the holiday budget and stay exclusively at a cat-ski lodge? This delicious question was put to me, and answered, last winter with K3 and Chatter Creek helping out on the research.

by Matt COTÉ    Photos Bruno Long  in December 2016 issue

K3 FOR A DAY

I pull into the Modern Bakery in downtown Revelstoke, unfed, on a slushy Thursday morning. It’s 7:30 a.m., an easy start by all accounts—you’d just as easily have to be up this early on a pow day at the ski hill. I’m a bit early, so I spy the fare available for breakfast. Meanwhile, two attractive ladies with long blond hair pore over Rite in the Rain books and maps at the table behind me. One lifts her head and spots me: “Hi! Are you with us today?”

Happily, I am. They check my name off the list for K3 Cat Ski’s Revy pickup for the day. Penny Goddard and Jessica Taylor are guides whose daily routine revolves around collecting errant cat-skiers each morning at various locations around Revelstoke, though this is where they do their morning meetings and grab lunches.

I get myself a Southwestern burrito and cinnamon bun while the rest of my crew rolls in: skiers Marcus Caston and Leah Evans, and photographer Bruno Long. We sip coffee in our Gore-Tex—this town’s most fashionable wear—while we wait for our lift. Just when most people begin their commutes to work, we commence ours into the Monashee Mountains.

K3 Cat Ski operates in Malakwa, B.C., about halfway between the Victorian epicentre of backcountry skiing that is Revelstoke, and the village of Sicamous, B.C., on Shuswap lake—the summertime houseboat capital of Canada (just try to prove them wrong). K3 owners and operators David and Kris Moore and Rod Bailey live in Sicamous, but also keep an office in Revelstoke, so the company does pickups in both towns. It’s about a 30-minute drive in a cushy Toyota Sequoia from either hamlets to get to the snowcat staging. Our guide, Goddard, doubles as chauffeur, and chats about family life along the way. It’s somewhat of a rarity for a ski guide to be able to come back to her own home each night, and she loves it.

Once arrived, we’re paired into groups for the day and meet our wily tail guide, Andy Adamson, a broad-shouldered, husky-voiced mountain man whose energy eclipses everyone else’s.

Caston, a Salt Lake City-based freeskier who spends most of his time filming for Warren Miller Entertainment, is completely smitten with the down-home feel of the entire operation. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says.

We load into the cat with our fellow skiers for the day, and Evans and Long get to work with introductions. There’s a dad and his teenaged kid from Toronto, a couple of Brits, a couple of Americans and us. Meanwhile, tail guide Adamson squiggles drawings in the frost of the window and lays some ground rules.

“Okay, here’s Penny’s track,” he says. “Now check this out: The powder right here…” he squiggles another line next to Penny’s track, “is just as good as the powder over here…” he squiggles a far-off line that trails away. “The trouble with the powder over here…” he continues, pointing to the far line, “is that we lose you, and you ski into a ravine and maybe die, and then everybody’s bummed. Let’s not get bummed today, okay guys? We stay tight, best time ever!” The entire cat is in giggles, but heeds his directions.

When we get to avalanche safety training for the day, the comedy continues. Adamson demonstrates shovelling at a frenetically comic speed, panting while explaining: “Shovel like this, guys! You should be sweating! Your heart should be pounding. You just go as hard as you can. You should go so hard your shovel should break!”

Amid the laughter, I ask, “Your shovel should break?” He pauses, looks up and thinks for a second. “Uh, that wouldn’t be good, actually,” he answers, “but you gotta go fast!” He dives back into digging.

From the ridgetops and cat roads, we have clear views of the terrain. In the high alpine there are chutes, couloirs and open bowls, but not in the kind of imposing mountains that bear down on you: all looks open and appealing. It’s perfect cat terrain, with both subalpine passes and cols that link one area to the next. Everything up high is caked, and compared to the warm highway in the valley below, we’re in a three-metre snowpack up here.

Goddard starts us off right in the alpine. “It’s good stability today, guys, so we’re going right for it,” she says, as the group lights up. Our first run, a humble 300 vertical metres, takes us down Bob’s, a warm-up run that meanders at low angle from the mountaintop into the trees and snakes down through poppers that turn the whole group into bouncing oompa loompas.

A quick jaunt back to the summit via the diesel feline brings us to Ghost Trees, a similar run, only with caked alpine flora—commonly known as snow ghosts. Then it’s on to Bella. “This is going to bring us around into another zone,” says Goddard. The cirque is replete with spine features on which the guests play out their ski-movie fantasies. These skiers are strong and the conditions are right; Goddard doesn’t hold anybody back.

In between runs we dive indiscriminately into the lunch cooler full of wraps, sandwiches, drinks and cookies. And after a full day of pow shredding, we’re still back in Revelstoke with time to have a full evening of whatever we want. Though, all I want is sleep.

Day two follows the same pattern, but, for expediency, those who were here for the first day of avalanche training skip it and get right to skiing. The guides pair any repeat skiers into the right cats for their ability and speed.

We start the day on Bella again, but quickly move over to an area called South Park, at the far reach of the tenure, where we spend the rest of the day. The alpine rolls lead down to burnt forest and deliriously long runs to valley bottom that we ski in pitches of 300 metres at a time, to about 900 metres of total vertical.

Toward the end of the day, when it’s time to rally back to the cat for our departure, tail guide Adamson blasts by with an extra pair of skis strapped to his pack. “Follow me!” he yells. The other group’s tail guide is taking a shift driving the cat, so Adamson volunteers to take his skis down—for some reason. Next, Adamson hits a bump and ejects forward, spearing upside down into the snow, hanging by the two skis on his pack. Photographer Bruno jumps to his aid, unclipping him from his pack. Adamson falls to the ground like an ejected fighter pilot hung up in a tree by his parachute. After more than 5,000 metres of skiing for the day, it’s easy to get shaky legs.

“We’re lucky geographically,” says owner Kris Moore. “Our tenure is easy enough to get into that we didn’t need a lodge right away.” K3’s founders were originally in forestry and had winters off. They became avid backcountry users and decided to make a business out of it. Ten years later, plans for a lodge are taking shape, but Moore says they’ll keep the day-skiing as well since it’s a nice flexible option for many guests, and K3 enjoys introducing people to cat-skiing at a lower commitment level. Further plans include a small ski-touring hut, making a trifecta of options for those looking to get into Malakwa powder.

CHATTER CREEK FOR A WEEK

There’s a whole lot going on in the ghost town of Donald, B.C., on this sunny spring morning. Today it’s staging for Chatter Creek, but in the late 1800s it was a major switchyard for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and then the site of one of B.C.’s largest sawmills until the 1980s. That millwork eventually migrated to the nearby lumber and logging town of Golden, where you’ll also find Kicking Horse Mountain Resort and a healthy concentration of backcountry-skiing businesses.

Chatter Creek is well-known for its challenging terrain and some infamous cat roads that top seemingly impossible peaks. Despite being situated on the western edge of the Rockies, it benefits from a far deeper snowpack than its closest comparable ski-resort cousins. Depending on elevation and what area in its tenure, the snowpack can be 2.5 to 3.5 metres deep—and helps bridge out several glaciers as ski runs.

Freeskiers Chris Rubens, TJ Schiller and Colston VB accompany photographer Bruno Long and me in the 15-minute helicopter ride to the compound, which houses 36 guests and 25 staff at a time. Two main log buildings with footprints the size of multiple tennis courts connect to form the lodge, with a causeway between them. A separate row of log outbuildings also accommodates many employees, then there’s a sauna, a mechanics shop and the heating house, which pumps warmth into the main buildings from a giant wood-fired furnace. The place is so comfortable so far off the grid I’d gladly live out the zombie apocalypse here.

The operation was built by loggers, who in 1999 secured a tenure and harvested the wood for the buildings right on-site. Today, original founder Dan Josephson is still commonly at the lodge, but Marketing Manager Isabelle Thibeault was equally there from inception, and recalls the epic ensemble of volunteer friends from Golden who came together to make it happen, just because they believed in the idea.

“The location was what drove the vision,” she says. “Beautiful Rockies terrain with Selkirk snow. The trick was to make the roads on the steep terrain.”

Before we get on those roads, there’s orientation about the amenities by lovely Lodge Manager Jenn Salvador—during which Schiller hooks on to the satellite WiFi network with his phone and immediately launches his dating app, Tinder, to see what other lovely creatures abound. Despite the remoteness, he’s quickly matched with three women. The rumours of love in the woods are true, it seems…

Meanwhile, there’s hot chili out, a friendly bar to mingle at, giant rooms and massages. The first night we meet our guide, Brodie St. Julian, and tail guide, Valérie Marticotte, over the first of many memorable dinners.

Morning is a little fuzzy, but the group stretch session the lodge offers helps with that. After a hearty breakfast comes avalanche training. It’s thorough and to the point, but without wasting any time. Everyone is here to shred.

Next, we load cats and rally right to Super North, the heart of the alpine. Jagged peaks protrude in all directions, many of them with cat roads on them. The most notable among those that we’ll come to see is Vertebrae Ridge, the most famously aesthetic landscape feature of the area, showing off Rocky Mountain thrust faulting as though from a geology classroom.

The skiing in our own group is predictably rowdy, so we’re treated to a separate program—standard practice for anyone who can fill a cat as a self-collected group. Our first run is a bowl feature that leads to several benches and treed cliffs below. All told, 800 or so metres. Schiller and VB make with the aerials off the top, while Rubens exercises his precise big-mountain acumen on more technical features. St. Julian and Marticotte monitor closely, but quickly gain a trust in our group that sets the tone for the following days as we link pitches together with minimal pausing. We get to know this zone, and lap it for the day, working its flanks for fresh new turns each time, allowing our skiing to grow with confidence.

Another boozy night of deliciously rich food ensues to replenish our carbs for tomorrow. Throughout, some of the staff join the guests having late-night fun with foosball and pool—their jobs seem like the best-ever. I overhear a 30-something tech-industry worker from Seattle mix it up with a plumber from Calgary at the bar, “Man, this is just what I needed,” they tell each other. Behind them the tickle trunk comes out and the ladies play drunken dress-up around them.

Late nights translate into early mornings, but the skiing is unmatched here so not a single person is late. If you like big terrain, and adventurous guides who want to get you on it, there’s nowhere better to be. But it can be a tough vibe to keep up with, too. Chatter Creek is famously aggressive in this regard. It’s full throttle, full time: at dinner, at the bar and on the slopes.

Our dishevelled group gets no breaks from St. Julian, who managed to go to bed early and has no sympathy. He brings us to Derkaderkastan for the day, which is a longer version of Super North. Similar antics play out, and we plan for glacier skiing the next day. With 1,200 metres of vertical already behind us over two days, dancing shorter runs up high tomorrow will be a welcome relief.

For our final day, St. Julian brings us to the Vertebrae Glacier, where an underground lake has drained into a magnificent ice cave that could swallow a house. After some time jibbing inside the impressive cavern like kids on a first snowfall in Ontario, we punch our legs on a couple of final short hikes that St. Julian insists will be the exact right closing notes.

“This is why I love Chatter,” insists Rubens, whose tree-trunk legs laugh at the rest of ours over the well-worth-it final run.

The next morning’s reluctant heli-ride out gives us views of some of the proudest peaks in the land: Iconoclast, Sir Sandford, Mount Columbia… Everything about Chatter Creek is big—including leaving.

CHOOSE YOUR CAT

One could argue the price difference between staying at a ski resort and day-cat-skiing vs. a week in the alpine at a cat-operation is pretty comparable. The transportation to the lodge, accommodation, dinners and breakfasts (lunch is always included) make up most of the monetary difference between the two.

Every operator curates a unique experience according to distinct terrain and snow, so you have to decide what you like best. To make your best call on staying or day-ing, it’s easiest to start from the baseline of skiing. Look at what kinds of groups ski what kinds of terrain, and how many people fill a cat. Next, figure out how much you want to add on, or how flexible you need to be. If you’re looking for the bare bones experience of the skiing, you can have an equally epic experience by the day, feeding yourself and finding your own accommodation in between, and perhaps saving a few bucks that way. It’s also handy if you’re into hitting the town since places like Revelstoke do bump at night.

Day-ski operations are also usually more open with availability and can book you in closer to the time. If you want to bank on catching the right conditions, or perhaps pair with a day or two at a resort, or stay serendipitous in your planning—this is the way to go. You also save half a day to a day on either end of your trip since there’s no staging into the operation: you ski the same day you go in, which is not often the case with stay operations.

On the flip side, flying or snowcatting farther up into a remote zone to a private lodge tends to bring you to bigger, more remote mountains, sometimes with more snow. If you want to unplug and not have to think about any details for yourself, this is the way to go. You’ll be treated to the highest quality meals with no effort, and stay in comfortable but rustic digs you’d have a hard time duplicating in town.

Stay operations have more time to adjust groups according to ability over multiple days, too. And, by the time you’re there, it’s quicker to get skiing each morning, plus you can come back a little later and chill out faster. The lodge experience is also a bonding one. Get to know your compatriots and other guests in the hot tub, over dinner or at the bar. Perhaps you’ll even fall in love—there’s nothing like being out alone in the woods in the winter to get the hormones stirring.

And if yours aren’t already, maybe it’s time you get cat-skiing.

Ski Canada Magazine

Elan partners with White Wilderness Heli Skiing

Elan’s Ripstick skis are designed for ripping powder, launching cliffs, playing in the trees and arcing huge turns in even bigger terrain. They’re a tool at home in the heli-ski world and now they have a partner to help refine the skis further.

Elan Skis and White Wilderness Heli Skiing are teaming up. Elan will provide skis for guests at the Swiss run heli-ski operation in north-central B.C. And White Wilderness will help Elan improve the Ripsticks by testing new technology and future generations of the freeride ski.

“Out of all the heli-ski operations in North America, White Wilderness is the best match for Elan on countless levels,” says Elan’s Managing Director, Jeff Mechura. “From the terrain to the personality and ambiance to the European roots, our brand and skis couldn’t be more aligned with what they offer.”

White Wilderness is one of B.C.’s newest heli-ski operations. Based near Terrace the operation runs small group heli-ski packages into a 1500 square kilometre chunk of the Coast Mountains.

We tested several pairs of Ripsticks in Ski Canada’s first and second issues of this year.

The partnership extends to a contest. This winter Elan will give away two free trips to White Wilderness via the company’s social channels, @elanskis and @wwheliski

RYAN REPORT is a frequent web post by Ski Canada magazine’s technical editor, Ryan Stuart.

More RYAN REPORT posts

Ski Canada Magazine

In another generation, Heather Smith might be helping her charges as a nurse, or a stewardess. But it’s 2017 and the mountain guide who looks more like a model has just analyzed the most recent weather data and snow conditions, finished answering our avalanche training questions and, while waiting for morning stragglers to board our cat at Retallack, is working on her hatchet-throwing skills. I’m wearing my helmet. And trying to stay out of her way.

by IAIN MACMILLAN in December 2017 issue

Of all the cat-skiing in B.C. (by which, of course, I mean in all the world), Retallack surely lies in the top two or three for having the most consistently steep lines (most of them in the trees), most skiable cliffs and, judging from the few days that I was there late last March, in the club for deepest powder. Retallack is not a cat-ski operation for first-timers. I had eagerly accepted an invite to test gear with some company executives from Smartwool who’d been let off-leash, as well as a few of its sponsored athletes and other media hacks.

Like many resorts, cat-ski operations have built reputations and genres. Not too far away, for example, Selkirk Snowcat Skiing got first dibs on B.C. terrain when it gave birth to the concept of “skiing by boxcat” more than 40 years ago. Selkirk’s share of deep Kootenay powder continues to appeal to any strong intermediate on up who’s happy to head off the groomed for a week.

The cushiest of cat-ops is undoubtedly Island Lake near Fernie, where memories of dinner and the quality of sleeps are almost as strong as skiing untracked powder. Only have time for a day or two in the powder? Big Red Cats at Red Mountain is an ideal add-on to a few warm-up days at Red. (And the list goes on at helicatcanada.com.)

But Retallack, which only received its tenure in 1996, has always appealed to groups of younger, aggressive skiers and snowboarders—significantly more snowboarders. The grey-hair (or no-hair) set who can afford more than $1,000 a day to ski, seemed to have been replaced here by dreadlocks and tattoos who are skiing on someone else’s budget.

“The vast majority of Retallack skiers come in groups,” confirms Smith, referring to ours as an example. “If you weren’t a strong skier or snowboarder, you wouldn’t want to join most of the groups who ski here.” And I can see, as an individual, you wouldn’t want to join a posse of chargers if there’s a possibility of you bringing the pace down.

I often think of skiing as being the great “age-equalizer,” as in, our sport isn’t about how old you are, it’s whether or not you can keep up with the group. Despite knowing Retallack’s rep, and realizing I’m the oldest in the group, my only trepidation was on our 45-minute slog into the alpine the first morning. Where I might choose to listen to folk or maybe just the conversation above the whirr of the cat’s engine, the headbanger music is cranked to 11. I smile and agree to something unintelligible that my American seatmate Molly says, which I can now tell from her expression wasn’t a yes-or-no question. Which makes me laugh. Which makes her laugh.

But before long Heather unlocks the cat door and, skipping most of the stairs, we instead launch into the 40 cm of fresh that sit atop the 40-gazillion cm of existing. Within minutes, my new ski buddy, Molly, and I are chirping, singing and squealing in the trees—which is Retallack. (I want to at least hear how far I am from the one whom I may need to call on first for help.)

There’s little wind but with the snow still falling in enormous cakey groups of flakes, it’s indeed easier to ski in the trees, which offer good perspective. When we pop out into logging cuts, the slope suddenly disappears. Is it steep? Super-steep? Is it a cliff? My eyes tell my brain one thing, but I’m a lazy skier and like letting gravity dictate the size of my turns. “Stay centred, stay relaxed” applies here.

I’m often telling skiers who are new to powder not to “lean into the slope” and “don’t sit back,” but when the slope is obscured by heavy snowfall with a total lack of cues like trees or stumps and mushrooms, what I judge as a one-metre drop is more like three. I’m not an “air guy,” but Kootenay powder is so forgiving I become one for three days. I get used to checking speed by measuring turns by the dropping feeling in my stomach and how deep I am on the compression: knees, waist or nipples. The stuff of dreams.

In the evening we dress for dinner in Kootenay formalwear of snapback trucker caps and plaid, and share in raucous conversation about the steepest and deepest day all of us has had all season. One of Retallack’s more infamous owners, Karl the Gnarl, loudly recites more verse in preparation for late-night slam poetry with the younger set. I decline an invite for hot knives and can hear my fluffy duvet calling—I think tomorrow’s going to be a big day.

Ski Canada Magazine

As the interest in randonnée continues to escalate, so do the offerings of where and with whom. After a super-successful pilot project last season, the almost fully booked Chatter Creek Cat-Skiing has launched a new Guided Ski Touring program to run January through March.

Guests get a bump up into the alpine in the morning in the cat, and then your guides and group are on your own to explore and play. Reaching terrain not accessible by cat is one reason the program is drawing attention, but the rewards of doing it under your own steam are just as important to most AT skiers.

Not sure of your ability to ski AT? “Most moderately active people who are happy to go for a hike or bike ride can enjoy ski touring,” says Josh Milligan, an ACMG ski guide. “We recommend that folks should be of intermediate ability and comfortable in a variety of terrain and snow conditions.”

Aside from the safety, knowledge and naughty jokes of a mountain guide, the same lodging, gourmet meals, hot tub, massage and heli-transfers are included in Chatter’s touring groups. For first-time-evers or seasoned pinheads, it’s worth investigating more at chattercreek.ca.

from Fall 2018 issue

Ski Canada Magazine

Only got a day to play? And $2,000 burning a hole in your pocket? Then do it right with Purcell Heli-Skiing and Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, now just a stroll from hotel room to heli-pad.

The cushiest part? There’s a cap of six people (plus two guides) in what’s usually a 10-seater Bell 205 heli, guaranteeing extra legroom inside but, most important, more untracked pow for an ultra-exclusive private group. Icing on the cake: only one group goes out per day, no rush, no competition—and 2,000 sq km of untouched B.C. backcountry.

Says Purcell Heli-Skiing’s Katie Gertsch, “Typically, you must share the operation and at least the terrain, often the helicopter, with other groups, which puts natural limits on where you can go, how fast you move, etc.”

One of the perks of being a top dog at Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, Matt Mosteller nabbed a coveted spot on the chopper during its launch last season. “You could not have better powder partners; as well, this location gives quick access to one of the biggest heli-ski terrains in the world, places you won’t see another track for miles,” says Mosteller. “One group, one big playground, a whole lotta fun!”

The handy heli-ski package can include a stay at Copper Horse, the resort’s most luxurious on-slope log lodge that’s kitted out with spa-like bathrooms, deluxe Euro-style featherbeds and down duvets, and a ritzy restaurant. Or if you’re as selfish about your lodging as your powder, Purcell will find you a luxury timber home nearby with grand views, spacious kitchens, steam rooms, hot tubs and game rooms. And if you feel like name-dropping afterward, you can share downhill dibs with PM Justin Trudeau, who’s ridden private Purcell powder in his pre-politics past. purcellheliskiing.com/packages/

by LOUISE HUDSON in Buyer’s Guide 2020 issue

Ski Canada Magazine

WE’RE KNEE-DEEP IN HOW SKI LIFE HAS EVOLVED AFTER 50 YEARS OF HELI-SKIING.

BY LESLIE WOIT

No radio, no avalanche transceiver, no veggie options… Take my hand as we travel back in time to 1970. You’re humming that new tune “Bridge Over Troubled Water” as you squeeze your tight little package into those navy Pedigree stretch pants and snap into some newfangled plastic Kastingers. Clambering into the middle seat of a bubble-licious Bell 47, we’re whisked like magic to the top of a mountain and, presto, you are among the first people in the world ever to heli-ski with Mike Wiegele. Part Star Trek, pure Jetsons, this is far out and right on and bad, bad, bad. Who cares when the powder is this good? Let the good times roll, baby!

REV ’ER UP

This classic flying machine, a Bell 47, may look like it was glued together in someone’s garage, but at the time it certainly beat walking up. For the record, the very first use of a helicopter for skiing was in 1963 when Hans Gmoser flew up into Kananaskis, but Wiegele was quickly onto a good thing. In 1970 he hung out his shingle in Valemount, B.C., and headed high into the Cariboo Mountains. Shortly after, he found more snow and less wind when he relocated an hour up the highway to Blue River, about halfway between Kamloops and Jasper. Today, it’s the Bell 212 twin engines that are the workhorses of the mountains, alongside snazzy powerful A-Stars, the Ferrari of the skies.

SHARING POWDER

An eye-wateringly large tenure of 6,000 sq km and 50 years of making tracks didn’t just happen. Tracing his finger along the table, Wiegele draws an imaginary line to demonstrate how the heli-ski world was carved out by its first pioneers, long before the early 1980s when the provincial government issued the first legal tenures for recreational land use by heli-ski operators.

“We took a pencil and divided up the best terrain,” explains Wiegele of the early arrangements beaten out with Hans Gmoser of Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH). “And we said, ‘Hey, you got a little too much there, I’ll take that, and vice versa’,” describing a gentlemen’s agreement between two mountain guides that belied their fiercely competitive natures. Wiegele went head-to-head with Gmoser—as only Austrians can—and by 1974 two more guides, Rudi Gertsch and Peter Schlunegger, would open their own operations, too—Purcell Heli-Skiing and Selkirk Tangiers.

While CMH grew to 12 individual lodges, Wiegele expanded his tenure into what would be the largest single helicopter skiing area in the world, stretching about 128 km from north to south and some 64 km east to west. Today as many as 12 helicopters lift and land on more than 1,000 named routes, pinning runs such as Steinbock and Most Magnificent onto the maps of the world’s heli-skiing elite.

Over the years, that first fistful of Austrian and Swiss post-war émigrés has evolved to a current-day association of more than 20 heli-skiing operations in B.C. run by a new breed of mostly Canadians and spawned further outfits around the globe. From India, Iceland and the Alps, to Greenland, Russia, the Stans and Down Under, what began in Canada has gone global.

SOUNDS LIKE A SAFE BET

With growth, came increasingly rigorous safety measures. In the 1970s, Wiegele was introduced to Pieps avalanche beacons at an ICAR (International Commission for Alpine Rescue) conference and soon became the first heli-operator in North America to include the Pieps brand avalanche transceiver in mandatory safety protocol. His safety infrastructure expanded to include three weather stations, three radio repeater stations and an avalanche research program with the University of Calgary.

LAST ONE DOWN’S A TAIL GUIDE!

While the industry standard is 11 guests to one guide, for decades Wiegele has provided groups of 10 skiers with two guides—lead and rear. There are also doctor-guides on staff, and more female guides than ever. If you ask nicely, you might get to see Wiegele’s fire truck or, more impressively, the massive heated hangar facility located at the end of the private airstrip. Drake, eat your heart out.

SKINNY’S OUT, FAT’S IN

If you’re sufficiently vintage to remember tackling powder on long skinny skis—the twisted backs, thigh pain, tangled bits of string—kudos to you. If you’re a post-1992 heli-skier, you’ll never know how good you have it. In the mid ’90s, Wiegele’s long friendship with ever-jolly Rupert “Killy” Huber of Atomic bore fruit. Thanks to Huber’s wacky experiments bisecting snowboards in his workshop, labs and around the Stammtisch in Altenmarkt, Austria, fat skis are now the answer to our deep-snow dreams. In 1994, the smiley Wohlgemuth brothers from Whistler, B.C., made synchro-tastic headlines by winning the World Powder 8 Championships at Wiegele World on a pair of 180 Atomic Fat Boys. A quarter-century on, rockers, different flexes and varying widths mean we’re not simply assigned one pair of skis for the week anymore. Daily choices suit varying snow conditions with no bother, no fuss, thanks to the awesome ski shop guys and Wiegele’s ski valet service that delivers direct to your helipad.

NO MORE JAIL TIME

Ah, the good ol’ days. Behind bars in a cell of one’s own at the disused police station. Or perhaps getting jiggy in an orange shag motel room with a lavender hopper (and those were the renovated ones). That’s how early heli-skiing rolled in Blue River until the first guest chalets were built in 1980. From that moment, there has been no stopping Wiegele’s building fetish: from log cabins with fireplaces and private baths, to luxurious chalets with steam showers and walk-in/walk-out helipads. The ever-expanding village is now an alpine sprawl of 22 chalets accommodating more than 100 heli-skiers at a time; a massive main lodge with dining room, lounge, fitness centre, stretch room and massage therapy clinic; plus a guides building with a medical clinic, and a reception building.

AND THEN THERE WERE GIRLS

Back in the early ’80s, women accounted for a scant two to three per cent of heli-skiers. Today current industry tallies count them closer to a third of the clientele.

LEAVE YOUR CROWN AT THE DOOR

Celebs and royals can’t get enough of Wiegele’s deep powder and long wine lists. The guest manifest has long featured a tony set of doctors, dentists and dealmakers, alongside ski royalty icons Jake Burton and Marcel Hirscher, Hollywood ones like Kiefer Sutherland, as well as more conventionally crowned heads such as Princess Caroline of Monaco, Prince Ernst von Hannover, the King of Sweden and the Aga Khan. The ultimate in log-cabin luxury—with room for security detail—the Bavarian Estate House is set on Lake Eleanor apart from the main lodge, offering six bedrooms, a private chef and three-bedroom Cabana. And no matter what colour your blood, in the end everyone ends up at the Legion.

WHO DOESN’T NEED AN 18-BEDROOM CHALET?

We can’t leave out Albreda Lodge, built in 2004, a half-hour drive north of Blue River. The lavishly private chalet is big enough to shelter your own group plus a few hangers-on each in their own en-suite bedroom. “Gone are the days when people would bunk up together,” Wiegele says, opening the door onto a massive outdoor patio that is dug out and decorated each week for a stylish ice bar party. “So now we give them what they want.”

MEASURING A GOOD TIME

Last season, Wiegele made a poignant reference to “getting some good skiing”—a turn of phrase that rings old-fashioned charm bells. Like the old black-and-white photos of smiling ski runners who climbed for hours and valued every turn and peak-lined panorama on the way down. He’s not asking if we bagged any sick lines, big air or—God forbid—25,000 vertical feet in a day clocked by an app on my phone. Why would he? Good skiing with friends is, still, what it’s all about.

NEW WORDS IN THE DICTIONARY

Sure, Wiegele gets stick for speaking a mélange of neither English nor German—Germglish is a thing, after all—but we must recognize his contribution to the lexicon of ski life with the invention of “heli-belly”: n. the notable tendency to gain weight during a week of vigorous heli-skiing and the crazy contradiction therein. The phenomenon derives, in fact, from the grumpy guy in the big white hat, Executive Chef Toni Spori, who has been cooking up the most delicious creations in Canada and teaching the world to swear in Swiss-German since 1990. Gopfetori, huere Dotsch!

UNIQUE GUIDING CREDS

In 1990, Wiegele founded and developed the Canadian Ski Guide Association (CSGA) to train young Canadians as guides specifically for mechanized backcountry skiing. All his guides are also ski instructors and hold a minimum CSIA Level III.

RECOGNITION WHERE IT’S DUE

In 1990 the Governor General presented Wiegele with the Bravery Award, which followed the Jim Marshall Award for Excellence from the Canada West Ski Areas Association for outstanding contribution, exceptional skills and dedication to skiing. This year, he was awarded a Doctor of Laws from Thompson Rivers University, B.C.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE GOOD TIMES GONE?

No one disputes the world has gone PC, and skiers already miss the crazy wackadoodle good ol’ days. The bring-your-own-pole girls. The take-your-pants-off-at-the-door parties. The topless girls skiing down to the heli-pickup, all in a row. That would never happen these days, if only because guides go ballistic if you don’t leave at least five turns of spacing. Heli-skiing in its heyday was a summer camp in the snow for hijinks and high spirits. Long may it live in our memories. 

from Buyer’s Guide 2020

Ski Canada Magazine

Red Mountain near Rossland, B.C., is not a place of ostentatious wealth. There are no cold-bed mansions sitting seldom used, no affiliation to Epic, Mountain Collective or Ikon passes brotherhoods. And there’s no chain-store-riddled pedestrian mall running through its heart. Just plenty of big mountain fresh pow and peeps who know how to power through it, on-piste and off.

All of which makes it feel somewhat incongruous that I find myself seated here at Red in a trendy-looking hotel lounge sipping a blueberry mojito while picking at a plate of grilled avocado, crumbled feta cheese and toasted seeds collectively called a Monashee Green Salad. The Velvet Lounge’s name may connote suds and strippers, but the atmosphere at The Josie Hotel’s in-house watering hole is anything but seedy. With its trendy cocktail menu, artisanal nosh and sophisticated atmosphere, it feels more Yaletown than small town. And that’s precisely the point.

The Josie opened last November at the base of Red, single-handedly raising the luxury bar in the most unlikely of locales

The first ski-in/ski-out hotel built in Canada in more than a decade, The Josie opened last November at the base of Red, single-handedly raising the luxury bar in the most unlikely of locales—an old-school, community-run Powder Highway ski resort with no high-speed lifts, no Starbucks, no Lululemon outlet and zero tolerance for fancy resort posturing. A five-storey high, 106-room, concrete-and-glass $40-million roll of the real estate dice, The Josie was conceived as a partnership between Noble House Hotels and Resorts, operator of 18 luxury boutique hotels across North America, and Houston-based William Cole Companies, a boutique, full-service private real estate development company.

Why gamble on building a luxury hotel in a relatively isolated blue-collar ski resort with few amenities located more than a two-hour drive from the nearest accessible airport in Spokane, Washington, and close to a three-hour drive from Kelowna down notoriously unreliable Hwy 3B? Because The Josie actually fits with Red Mountain’s broader strategy to preserve and protect what is here in terms of the ski experience: the friendliness, openness, value and sense of community, according to Howard Katkov, the Californian real estate developer who bought the resort in 2004.

“There aren’t many four-star hotels being opened at ski resorts,” he adds. “We speak to the 40-something adventure family that also appreciates a beautiful hotel.”

“This hotel at a ski resort anywhere would be a big deal,” Katkov says as we share a catered dinner at Dean’s Cabin, one of the many cozy, rustic cabins nestled within the resort’s boundaries a snowball’s throw from the new girl on the block. “There aren’t many four-star hotels being opened at ski resorts,” he adds. “We speak to the 40-something adventure family that also appreciates a beautiful hotel.”

Joining us is William Coles’s managing director, Spencer Clements, a soft-spoken Texan who bears a striking resemblance to George W. Bush. Clements, who has flown up from Houston with his family to experience for himself the hotel he spearheaded, is as reflective as he is proud of his new baby.

“What swept me up was the independence of this place, its pioneer spirit,” he says, explaining that his team chose the name Josie after one of Canada’s most prolific silver mines in the 1890s. Its owner, the Rossland pioneer prospector and serial entrepreneur, R.E. Lemon, sentimentally named his motherlode mine after his favourite sister, Josie, who accompanied him out west.

“Josie is the muse, the feminine mystique. But it’s more about what she did, the pioneer spirit. That’s what we’re celebrating here.”

“Women like Josie Lemon, who lived here back in the late 1800s, had a higher sense of purpose and social order,” Clements says. “To celebrate that feminine spirit of pioneer perseverance, we named this hotel The Josie.
“You won’t find any faded photographs of Josie Lemon on the walls of her namesake hotel,” adds Clements, “because we didn’t want to get that literal with it and put her picture on the wall. Josie is the muse, the feminine mystique. But it’s more about what she did, the pioneer spirit. That’s what we’re celebrating here.”

Whether Clements, Katkov and their ownership partners will also strike it rich with the slopeside Josie Hotel remains to be seen, but they get full points for the audacity of their vision. I’m greeted by cheerful valet parking attendants as my shuttle bus pulls up to the hotel’s impressive porte-cochere. Inside the lobby, whimsical chandeliers that resemble bushy tree branches hang over refurbished chairlift seats, leather sofas, parquet flooring and a glass fireplace. No deer antlers, moose heads or crossed snowshoes hang from the walls; everything feels slick and modern.
Each day I hand off my skis and boots to the on-site ski concierge, who will have everything dry and ready to roll the next morning. Designed by architect Song Chia of Fab Studio and Design DMU, I feel like I’m in Whistler, Vail or Aspen, not Rossland.

The Josie’s cuisine is also impressive. From his glass-walled kitchen facing the Velvet’s upscale restaurant, Executive Chef Marc-Andre Choquette oversees the preparation of his French-influenced menu sprinkled with dishes like pork miso ramen, Kushi oysters, baked sablefish and confit rabbit pappardelle pasta, all sustainably sourced from local farmers and producers. You can still get a steak, rack of lamb and a burger, too. It’s Friday night and the dining room is already packed.

Towering over it is a mountain with four skiable peaks that’s more than half the size of Whistler Blackcomb yet only receives about one-fifteenth of its annual skier-visits.

It’s only when I look out the restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows that I’m reminded of where I am. Directly across the road is Red’s utilitarian day lodge, a former gold mining compressor building. Its top floor houses Rafters Tavern, the dive bar infamous for après-ski No Shower Happy Hours. Towering over it is a mountain with four skiable peaks that’s more than half the size of Whistler Blackcomb yet only receives about one-fifteenth of its annual skier-visits.

With The Josie as my convenient base just steps from the lifts, I set out to play in the powder. Day one starts with a full-on cat-skiing adventure across the eight peaks that make up Big Red Cats’ 7,800-hectare tenure. The next day, I explore Red’s refreshingly uncrowded runs with mountain host Mike Ramsey, a transplanted Torontonian who relocated to Rossland post-retirement.

“Rossland is very accepting and age neutral,” says Ramsey as we ride the Motherlode chair to the summit of Granite Mountain. “By that, I mean that you don’t get slotted into a niche or a group or a perceived demographic. It’s all about why you’re here as a person and what you do recreationally versus what you’ve accomplished, or what your vocation or financial status happens to be.”

Whether or not The Josie’s upscale offerings will be enough to overcome its location in a relatively small, geographically isolated market remains to be seen. But I have to admire the bold gamble it took to build it at all. In a place synonymous with a pioneering spirit and a willingness to take huge risks, the audacity of vision that The Josie represents would have made her namesake proud.

from Fall 2019 issue

from the archives

Ski Canada Magazine

50 Years at Wiegele and RK Heliski

From the Rockies to the Monashees, Mike Wiegele has been wowing the ski world with 50 years of heli-skiing and luxe log cabin pampering. Tributes, storytelling and celebrations range from the release of his award-nominated film Call Me Crazy (wiegele.com/CallMeCrazy) to the return of the Powder 8 World Championships in early April. On the other side of the province, RK Heliski has morphed from Roger and Jenny Madson’s Radium Hot Springs Glacier Skiing, which started 50 years ago originally using STOL aircraft on skis, to the world’s number one day-heli-ski operation from its base at Panorama and powder playground in the Purcells. Maybe it’s time to give yourself a birthday present of heli-skiing.

from Winter 2020 issue

Ski Canada Magazine

Monashee Powder Snowcats: All in the Family

With a laugh, cat-ski guide John Dutton calls it “job security.” About nine years ago he was working as a tail guide at Monashee Powder Snowcats, halfway between Cherryville and Revelstoke, B.C., when he met the owners’ daughter, Kristi Morgan. A secretive winter romance quickly became much more. Neither John nor Kristi were sure if it would last beyond the winter, but they say their connection was too much to shrug off.

A few months later, Dutton, who also operates a rafting company in the summer, was guiding his then girlfriend’s parents and Monashee Powder owners Carolyn and Tom through Class IV rapids near Nelson, B.C., when he broke the news that he and Kristi were dating. Raising her paddle from the water, Carolyn (jokingly) yelped, “You’re dating who?”

Almost a decade later, Dutton, having been mentored by Karl Klassen— a senior avalanche forecaster at the Canadian Avalanche Centre—is a supervising lead guide at Monashee Powder. Kristi is a project manager and civil engineer with Canadian Pacific Railway. And now roaming the halls is their toddler Jasper and his cousin Isla—Monashee Powder Snowcats is a family business.

Isla belongs to lodge managers Gary and his wife, Keaton. Gary is Tom and Carolyn’s son, and Kristi’s brother. He was working as an automotive mechanic in Edmonton before he decided to get into the family business. Today, Gary and Keaton, an elementary school teacher, manage the lodge’s staff, its administrative affairs and finances. But the lodge has become far more than simply an office.

“It doesn’t even feel like we’re at work, it’s almost like a second home,” said Keaton. “I’ll just hang out with the baby in the living room, and I think the guests pick up on and appreciate that.”

Although Kristi has pursued a career outside of the ski industry, she can’t help but pitch in around the lodge when she’s “home.” It’s in her blood, and her little boy’s.

“It’s been really amazing to watch how all the staff and guests have embraced the children,” said Kristi. “You have these young male tail guides who have really taken to them and love having the babies around. It feels like everything and everyone is so connected up here.”

That’s because it’s more than just the immediate family who have become part of this mum ’n’ pop operation. Many of the staff feel they’ve become part of Carolyn and Tom’s extended family.

Keaton says Carolyn puts together more than 15 Christmas stockings every year; and John points out the family vehicles are always available for staff to run errands. Carolyn and Tom’s home down in Vernon, about 45 minutes west of the trailhead access to the lodge in Cherryville, has an open-door policy even when they’re not around. It’s that kind of family dynamic and down-to-earth, rustic lodge that makes guests feel like they’re at home.

“There are lots of good cat-ski operations, but guests feel part of the experience here,” said Dutton, over a beer after the evening guide meeting. “We’re not super polished. And I know that our guests really like that.”

With three guides in each cat, Monashee Powder is universally recognized as being among the best places to be mentored in the ski guiding industry. Dutton and mother-in-law, Carolyn, give credit to Karl Klassen, a veteran of the industry and senior member of both the Canadian Avalanche Association and Avalanche Canada. Klassen’s been working up at Monashee Powder for almost 15 years. Lodge manager Gary says that Klassen is at the forefront of the industry and that because of the academic work that Klassen is included in, the young tail guides learn ahead of the curve.

But as much as there is a collegial and family atmosphere that makes Monashee Powder unique, what ultimately keeps guests returning year after year is the snow. Carolyn says it doesn’t matter who you are up in the Monashees, what matters is the skiing. “We try to keep it democratic and real. We’re not hoity-toity. We really just want everyone to be themselves. I don’t care who you are, CEO or whatever. We’re into people who want to ski. Really, we’re about the snow. We get up early and we go skiing.”

Well, lucky for Carolyn, who never expected she’d run a ski lodge with her husband or that her two grandchildren would roam the halls, the Monashees have among the most consistent snowpacks in the world. And when you have outstanding snow and a devoted family, Monashee Powder offers the best of both worlds.

from December 2019 issue

Ski Canada Magazine