Game On! in the Kootenays

Posted on 29. Nov, 2009 by Dave Quinn in BC, teaser

The winter skies this year have dumped some of their best early season snow in a long while. Still, while the hard-core backcountry skiers of the Kootenays have been earning their turns since Halloween, the rest of us mortals have had to wait for some diesel-assisted fun on resort lifts. Turns out we won’t have to wait long, though. Here’s why:

courtesy Whitewater Ski Resort

Nelson’s Whitewater Ski Resort (WH2O) is one of the last of a dying breed. Purely and simply, WH2O is a ski hill. Period. No on-hill accommodation facelifts. No lifestyle-oriented real estate tummy tucks. No Rundle-rock and timber frame implants. Just one valley, two lifts and enough snow to choke a mountain caribou – 140 cm at the time of writing. Not bad for November 23.

At the other of the rugged Selkirk Mountains and the ski resort spectrum lies an altogether different beast, the much-touted Revelstoke Mountain Resort (RMR). Rescued from receivership last year, the new development boasts 1,700-plus metres’ elevation – the highest lift-serviced vertical in North America – and, at full capacity, zips skiers all over the mountain on 20 different lifts while allotting skiers their choice of 5,000 beds to sleep off all that vertical. If that’s not enough, with its cat skiing and heli-ski partners, RMR also offers 200,000-plus hectares of terrain to choose from. Different slopes for different wallets.

The only things these two vastly different resorts share are the sick skiing of the Selkirk Mountains and an opening date: Saturday, November 28. These are the first Kootenay hills to fire up the lifts this season.

So take your pick: bigger-better-higher-faster at the ‘Stoke, or the very chill, very real aura of Nelson’s Whitewater (don’t forget its Fresh Tracks Café – for some of the best lodge food on the planet). Winter is here. See you on the boards this weekend – bring your snorkel!

Lead image courtesy Whitewater Ski Resort

Tags: B.C., B.C. Skiing, Fresh Tracks Cafe, Revelstoke Ski Resort, Selkirk Mountains, The Kootenays, Whitewater Ski Resort

About the Author

Dave Quinn

The Kootenays Cranbrook-born Dave Quinn is a wildlife biologist and outdoor educator whose writing and photography explores human connections with wild places. For the past 16 years he has divided his time between his family and home office in Kimberley, guiding remote hiking and sea kayaking expeditions to the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, B.C.’s north coast and Patagonia and working as a field biologist with threatened and endangered species such as grizzly, lynx, badger, swift fox and mountain caribou. Recently he has focussed more on conservation work for Kimberley-based Wildsight, and for the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.

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