Thursday, January 13, 2011
Marmot Basin I Jasper Alberta
Marmot Basin is in Jasper National Park in Alberta, my home province and was our last stop on our first loop of Ski mountains. Unfortunately our timing turned out to be rather poor as we dropped into town in the middle of a cold snap. We skied 2 days, with a high of -18, the wind chill dropped that temperature another 10 degrees. The second day was so cold that we only completed 5 runs before abandoning the hill and retreating to the car to head home. My toes were so cold that even with 3 pairs of wool socks I nearly froze them off. The hostel we stayed at was nice though. It is the main HI hostel in Jasper and had an igloo, toboggan hill and most wonderfully a wood fire place that I parked myself in front of after the first day on the mountain. I do have this comment about marmot Basin, it was the most expensive hill to ski at ($77) and probably the smallest, and most boring. Even with only completing 5 runs the second day I felt bored as I had already hit most of the runs, as there is no variety between them. Overall Jasper got good marks, Marmot basin scored low 5/10.
Sun Peaks Resort
Unlike most hills we hit Sun Peaks only got 1 day's worth of skiing, for one main reason, I was tired. After 6 strait days of skiing I was running on empty. So this evaluation is based on 1 day.
We arrived on the mountain after driving from Big White, about a 3 hour drive, through a rainstorm that developed near kamloops, which turned into a skating rink half way up the mountain which turned into snow at the base of the hill. We stayed at the hostel which was on the mountain and in the old ski club lodge. The next morning we hit the hill and right off the bat we found the cherry on the cake. We dropped into the area serviced by the west side t-bar, which is only open on the weekends. This meant that all the snow the hill got over the last 5 days lay beneath my feet untouched and ungroomed. It brought back memories of Silver Star. 35cm of untouched snow. I was in a wonderland, or at least until the t-bar broke and we had to return to the main part of the hill. The rest of the hill (the mountain is the second largest ski resort in North America) is quite big and can be a challenging run. There are A Lot of chair lifts and the hill is really well designed. The hill has enough ski runs to cater to every ski level and was really fun. Overall the hill rated the second best on the trip, 9/10.
We arrived on the mountain after driving from Big White, about a 3 hour drive, through a rainstorm that developed near kamloops, which turned into a skating rink half way up the mountain which turned into snow at the base of the hill. We stayed at the hostel which was on the mountain and in the old ski club lodge. The next morning we hit the hill and right off the bat we found the cherry on the cake. We dropped into the area serviced by the west side t-bar, which is only open on the weekends. This meant that all the snow the hill got over the last 5 days lay beneath my feet untouched and ungroomed. It brought back memories of Silver Star. 35cm of untouched snow. I was in a wonderland, or at least until the t-bar broke and we had to return to the main part of the hill. The rest of the hill (the mountain is the second largest ski resort in North America) is quite big and can be a challenging run. There are A Lot of chair lifts and the hill is really well designed. The hill has enough ski runs to cater to every ski level and was really fun. Overall the hill rated the second best on the trip, 9/10.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Dissapoitment at Big White
Big White
Big White is a huge ski resort, with a big village. The night I arrived I went out to the bar and discovered that the night life is much better than Silver star's, mostly because there are more people and more bars. The skiing on the other hand kind of fell apart. Big white is known for it's constant white out conditions, and it didn't disappoint. The hill always seems to be fogged out, light snow, or in our case, raining. The rain got you wet, then you skied and it froze to your glasses and when you combined it with the fog led to a long day of whiteouts, pulled mussels and an urge to curse in several different languages. We skied there 2 days and I have some comments about it, first for a hill that is well known for having lack of visibility (the hill is known by the locals as Big Whiteout) the marking of the runs is horrible as I missed many of the runs when I had good visibility the first day, the connecting runs between the lifts is horrible, a lot of hill climbing to get to many of the runs that on any other hill you would glide to. Another unfortunate fact, several of the runs were closed due to lack of snow, about 24 of the 118, and the ones that were closed were the best runs. The skiing was just hard, the snow was heavy, sticky, and the complete opposite of the conditions on Silver Star. The problem with the snow was that it built up on your skies and made them incredibly heavy and hard to handle. The conditions were bad enough that even the ski patrol guys crashed. On one run I decided to follow a ski patrol because I couldn't see anything and I figured that they at least would know where they were going. Well about 3 minutes later I see the ski patrol guy crash and violently eject his poles and skies high into the air and then rain down around him. I was impressed to say the least, and decided not to take it personally if I followed suit. All in all the ski hill scored rather low because of poor hill design, bad conditions, and poorly marking the runs.
Sorry no pictures, to foggy and not good enough to take pictures.
Total score 4/10
total runs 118, only 94 open
Largest elevation drop 777m
8 chair lifts and 1 t-bar
Lift ticket $71
Ski and stay package $73
Big White is a huge ski resort, with a big village. The night I arrived I went out to the bar and discovered that the night life is much better than Silver star's, mostly because there are more people and more bars. The skiing on the other hand kind of fell apart. Big white is known for it's constant white out conditions, and it didn't disappoint. The hill always seems to be fogged out, light snow, or in our case, raining. The rain got you wet, then you skied and it froze to your glasses and when you combined it with the fog led to a long day of whiteouts, pulled mussels and an urge to curse in several different languages. We skied there 2 days and I have some comments about it, first for a hill that is well known for having lack of visibility (the hill is known by the locals as Big Whiteout) the marking of the runs is horrible as I missed many of the runs when I had good visibility the first day, the connecting runs between the lifts is horrible, a lot of hill climbing to get to many of the runs that on any other hill you would glide to. Another unfortunate fact, several of the runs were closed due to lack of snow, about 24 of the 118, and the ones that were closed were the best runs. The skiing was just hard, the snow was heavy, sticky, and the complete opposite of the conditions on Silver Star. The problem with the snow was that it built up on your skies and made them incredibly heavy and hard to handle. The conditions were bad enough that even the ski patrol guys crashed. On one run I decided to follow a ski patrol because I couldn't see anything and I figured that they at least would know where they were going. Well about 3 minutes later I see the ski patrol guy crash and violently eject his poles and skies high into the air and then rain down around him. I was impressed to say the least, and decided not to take it personally if I followed suit. All in all the ski hill scored rather low because of poor hill design, bad conditions, and poorly marking the runs.
Sorry no pictures, to foggy and not good enough to take pictures.
Total score 4/10
total runs 118, only 94 open
Largest elevation drop 777m
8 chair lifts and 1 t-bar
Lift ticket $71
Ski and stay package $73
Friday, January 7, 2011
Skiing on a cloud, Silver Star Resort
Well today we left Silver Star and I have to admit the bar has been set pretty high. We arrived on the mountain on Tuesday night and checked into the hotel (we got a ski and stay package for 85 dollars a day) called the Bulldog. It is right in the heart of the village 
and included a hot tub (looking out into the village), free continental breakfast, and most impressively free thongs. 
The accommodation on the hill is great, it is soo nice to be close to the bars and hang around with all the lift workers and what seemed like endless Australians. The night life on the hill is pretty good, but it is a smaller ski village and there are not that many people hanging around but there is enough to have a good party. The village itself has a good feeling and I enjoyed walking around as a new layer of snow fell down around me. The first day of skiing was good, the hill layout is excellent, there are 115 runs and only 3 were closed. The snow base was 163cm when we arrived which made good skiing even though there hadn't been a good snow fall in a couple of days. The skiing was mostly on a hard base but it was well groomed. I was able to complete about 29 runs the first day, which is even a lot for me, no lift lines, just good skiing. That night back at the hotel started by relaxing in the hot tub and soaking the mussels, then a drink at the bar. But this is all the warm up for what was awaiting for me when I woke up the next morning. I walked out of the hotel the next morning and dropped my ski's into 15cm of, fresh, fluffy, beautiful snow. 
It was the best day of skiing I have ever had, it was like skiing on a cloud, carving back and fourth through untouched snow, it wasn't the wet and heavy, it was dry, light, and crisp. 
The day ended and we returned to the car to pack up and drive to Big White near Kelowna, I wish I could have stayed but big White was calling but Silver Star so far has stolen the show.
Final stats for Silver Star
-Lift ticket $73
-Ski and Stay package $85 a day
-runs 115
-longest elevation drop 850m
-6 chair lifts and 1 t-bar
Run map can be found here http://www.skisilverstar.com/
Total score 10/10
and included a hot tub (looking out into the village), free continental breakfast, and most impressively free thongs. 
The accommodation on the hill is great, it is soo nice to be close to the bars and hang around with all the lift workers and what seemed like endless Australians. The night life on the hill is pretty good, but it is a smaller ski village and there are not that many people hanging around but there is enough to have a good party. The village itself has a good feeling and I enjoyed walking around as a new layer of snow fell down around me. The first day of skiing was good, the hill layout is excellent, there are 115 runs and only 3 were closed. The snow base was 163cm when we arrived which made good skiing even though there hadn't been a good snow fall in a couple of days. The skiing was mostly on a hard base but it was well groomed. I was able to complete about 29 runs the first day, which is even a lot for me, no lift lines, just good skiing. That night back at the hotel started by relaxing in the hot tub and soaking the mussels, then a drink at the bar. But this is all the warm up for what was awaiting for me when I woke up the next morning. I walked out of the hotel the next morning and dropped my ski's into 15cm of, fresh, fluffy, beautiful snow. 
It was the best day of skiing I have ever had, it was like skiing on a cloud, carving back and fourth through untouched snow, it wasn't the wet and heavy, it was dry, light, and crisp. 
The day ended and we returned to the car to pack up and drive to Big White near Kelowna, I wish I could have stayed but big White was calling but Silver Star so far has stolen the show.Final stats for Silver Star
-Lift ticket $73
-Ski and Stay package $85 a day
-runs 115
-longest elevation drop 850m
-6 chair lifts and 1 t-bar
Run map can be found here http://www.skisilverstar.com/
Total score 10/10
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Mountain 1 Revelstoke Resort
Ok so the first mountain was the Revelstoke Mountain Resort. 
We drove from my home in Wetaskiwin Alberta to Revelstoke British Columbia on December 2nd, we stayed at a hostel in Revelstoke costing $37 each, but the hostel was fun and nice as well as close to several bars on the main street. 
Now Revelstoke is a very unique town, they are known for getting a lot snow, there roofs are specially re-enforced roofs to withstand the extra weight of a ton of snow. 
I only mention this because for the last 2 years running they have had unusually low snow fall, making this hill hard to judge with only 1.3m of snow. 
This hill is a very tall hill, some of the biggest elevation drops I have ever seen, the one run is 1700m drop over 1 black diamond run. So anyway the mountain resort is still under construction with a future golf course planned, but here is my review of the mountain.
Lift ticket cost: 74
Accommodation: 37
Number of runs: 54
Chair lifts: 2, and 2 Gondola's
Current snow pack: 130cm's
The main issue I had was this hill was not enough snow, even on the groomed runs I continually hit rocks no matter what runs I was taking. For this main reason the hill got a poor score from me, but the hill just needed more of the white stuff. Final score from this visit 3/10. The town of Revelstoke and the hostel got good scores though as it is a very fun town. Next stop Silver star.
We drove from my home in Wetaskiwin Alberta to Revelstoke British Columbia on December 2nd, we stayed at a hostel in Revelstoke costing $37 each, but the hostel was fun and nice as well as close to several bars on the main street. 
Now Revelstoke is a very unique town, they are known for getting a lot snow, there roofs are specially re-enforced roofs to withstand the extra weight of a ton of snow. 
I only mention this because for the last 2 years running they have had unusually low snow fall, making this hill hard to judge with only 1.3m of snow. 
This hill is a very tall hill, some of the biggest elevation drops I have ever seen, the one run is 1700m drop over 1 black diamond run. So anyway the mountain resort is still under construction with a future golf course planned, but here is my review of the mountain.
Lift ticket cost: 74
Accommodation: 37
Number of runs: 54
Chair lifts: 2, and 2 Gondola's
Current snow pack: 130cm's
The main issue I had was this hill was not enough snow, even on the groomed runs I continually hit rocks no matter what runs I was taking. For this main reason the hill got a poor score from me, but the hill just needed more of the white stuff. Final score from this visit 3/10. The town of Revelstoke and the hostel got good scores though as it is a very fun town. Next stop Silver star.
Skication because January is Cheap Skiing Month
Well since I am unemployed, bored, and still have money in the bank, I have decided to head over to the mighty rocky mountains and start skiing. I started circling mountains thinking that I would hit every mountain in British Columbia. I started planning my first loop of about 14 days (as I have a wedding to go to on the 15 of January) involving 6 mountains, 2000km's, and a lot of energy. I found some specials online and I quickly sent my credit card number flying across the province snatching up those deals I couldn't pass up. I found a lot of deal in January for ski and stay for the price of the lift ticket. My current list for the first 2 weeks are:
-Revelstoke Mountain Resort, 1 day
-Silverstar Mountain, 2 days
-Big White Resort, 2 days
-Sun Peaks, 2 days
-Whistler (maybe)
-Marmot Basin, 2 days
I am also working on second trip starting the 17 of January running to the 28 (which is when I need to be back in Edmonton for a concert) involving Panarama, Fernie, Kicking Horse, Castle Mountain, lake Louise and Apex Mountains. I will update this blog every time I finish skiing a mountain, so keep an eye on this blog.
I will put up a blog about each mountain after I ski it.
-Revelstoke Mountain Resort, 1 day
-Silverstar Mountain, 2 days
-Big White Resort, 2 days
-Sun Peaks, 2 days
-Whistler (maybe)
-Marmot Basin, 2 days
I am also working on second trip starting the 17 of January running to the 28 (which is when I need to be back in Edmonton for a concert) involving Panarama, Fernie, Kicking Horse, Castle Mountain, lake Louise and Apex Mountains. I will update this blog every time I finish skiing a mountain, so keep an eye on this blog.
I will put up a blog about each mountain after I ski it.
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