Before we round up the usual Canadian suspects, examine their teeth and gush over a couple of young ones, let’s get business out of the way.
Starting Jan. 8, 2007, Americans traveling by air to Canada will require a passport on their return to the U.S.
Is it worth the hassle for skiers and boarders?
The short answer: Yes.
The long answers are to the right.
The accommodating and friendly Canadian ski scene is straight off a postcard–the snowy mountains, the sculpted runs and the sense of getting so much of the world in one gulp.
The fat resorts are out West, where British Columbia plays Colorado to Alberta’s Utah. Where winter doesn’t give up easily and the snow falls in perfect blankets.
In eastern Canada, in the province of Quebec, the truth fits the legend at sweeping Vermont-like ski resorts nesting above French-Canadian villages. The family names go back 300 years.
We’ll begin in the West.
British Columbia
– WHISTLER
– BLACKCOMB
– SUN PEAKS
– BIG WHITE
– SILVER STAR
– APEX
– FERNIE ALPINE
This is Ground Zero.
Ninety-five percent of the world’s helicopter and wilderness snowcat skiing is in British Columbia. There are 44 alpine resorts.
But the rock star is Whistler, where two peerless ski mountains just lay you out every day.
Whistler and Blackcomb knuckle up out of the Coast Range 80 miles north of drop-dead gorgeous Vancouver, host city for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
The young and vibrant resort community of Whistler is the venue for most of the on-snow events.
North American skiing doesn’t get any more leg tiring than Whistler. There are endless tree-lined groomers, scare-your-mother steeps and alpine, powder-filled bowls the size of the Sea of Tranquility.
Whistler offers the most acreage (8,171) and the highest vertical drop (a full country mile) of any resort on the continent. The trail map is labeled an atlas.
And the chic village is as picturesque as a Swiss chocolate-bar wrapper.
The crowd is part international jet-setters, part well-mannered Vancouverites and part rowdy young adults, the latter attributed to British Columbia’s 19-year-old drinking age.
The nightlife is frenzied. Winter and summer, for better or worse, Whistler is Canada’s best party town.
It’s also Uptown–with brand-name and boutique ski-in/ski-out hotels, white-clothed restaurants serving loin of wild Arctic caribou and wine cellars deep enough to boast verticals of bliss dating back to wooden skis.
Five mountain bases, bad-ass terrain parks and 17 mountain restaurants serve the nearly one million visitors who come in the winter.
Close to 40 lifts operate most days. This season, a new high-speed detachable quad opening new terrain is the centerpiece of $20 million in mountain upgrades.
You can’t ski Whistler in a week. Think Aspen, with all its four mountains and extravagant nightlife.
The new kid on the block, the Whistler wannabe, is a lulu named Sun Peaks Resort, located a tank of gas away from Vancouver.
Three mountains lord over a carless village. It’s British Columbia’s second-largest resort and has enough moxie to attract the Austrian men’s ski team every November to prep for the World Cup season.
And it comes without Whistler’s sometimes rainy maritime climate.
It is Whistler without the old Ft. Lauderdale-during-spring-break atmosphere. It’s where you bring the family if you’re serious about skiing. All ability levels can ski off every lift. The cozy digs are ski-in/ski-out.
Sun Peaks might be Western Canada’s best kept ski secret. Think Telluride without its Aspen pretensions.
Also within striking range of Vancouver is the Okanagan Valley, where vineyards have morphed into Canada’s Napa Valley. Big White, Silver Star and Apex ski resorts hover nearby.
The most all-rounded is Big White. The name says it all. Think New England charm with Western snowfalls.
On the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies, which are famous among heli-skiers, Fernie Alpine Resort is perhaps the quirkiest, most colorful of the ski areas–a trifecta of size, snow and steepness that has gained mythical status among the big mountain free-ride crowd.
A glitzy new village is changing the “hey-dude” atmosphere of Fernie, but the peripheral aspects of the ski experience have not consumed the core, which is the mountain.
The fact is, skiers traveling to British Columbia can’t make a wrong turn.
Alberta
– SUNSHINE VILLAGE
– LAKE LOUISE
– MARMOT BASIN
The Canadian Rockies stretch skyward north of Montana, mostly in the oil-rich province of Alberta, where the gateway city is Calgary, venue for the 1988 Winter Olympics.
The ski resorts of interest lie in Banff and Jasper National Parks, where the mountain scenery steals the show. For the most part, these are European-Alp-like slopes above tree line under china-blue skies on see-forever days.
The summit elevations are lower than those in Colorado and Utah, but so are the valleys so the scale is immense. That’s good news for flatlanders who ski Colorado only to be struck by symptoms of altitude sickness.
Sunshine Village is the first major resort west of Calgary (85 miles). The resort straddles the Continental Divide and is Canada’s highest elevation ski area (8,954 feet at the summit).
From the base parking lot, a high-speed gondola whisks skiers to an alpine meadow surrounded by white mountains lined up in a row like molars.
For years, Sunshine was known for its pleasant and scenic intermediate slopes set within Banff National Park. But now that free-riding big-mountain skiers are as plentiful as energy drinks, Sunshine has opened its north facing door to Delirium Dive.
If you go skiing looking for the moment, and you better believe there’s a moment, this hair-raising backcountry rock amphitheater dropping 2,000 vertical feet through 40-degree chutes, canoe-narrow couloirs and open alpine terrain will get you in the zone.
This meet-yourself-experience is restricted to expert skiers packing an avalanche transceiver, a shovel and a buddy.
Throw down another freeriding zone called The Wildwest and you’ve got mind-blowing stretches of white, haiku-like intensity. Sunshine has some of the toughest skiing you’ll find within a ski boundary anywhere in the world. At least that’s how it is every time I replay it.
For first-tracks skiers, there’s an 84-room inn at the base of the lifts, the only ski-in/ski-out accommodations in Canada’s national parks.
The town of Banff, 10 miles from the Sunshine, is arguably Canada’s most stunning urban setting. The castle-like Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel is the second-most photographed scene in the Rockies–after the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise.
Banff Park’s largest ski area is Lake Louise, down the road from Sunshine Village, 36 miles west of Banff.
The slopes reveal incomparable views of glacier-draped peaks. Across the valley is its namesake lake fronted by the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise.
Both the Banff Springs and the Chateau were built in the late 1800s by the Canadian Pacific Railroad, when there were porters and not hijackers.
In a very real sense, these luxury hotels put Canada on the map. The linen is still crisp, and the staff large.
Its four mountains stretch more than 3,000 vertical feet, offering a mix of tree-lined trails and wide-open alpine. Green, blue and black runs tumble off all 28 lifts, and a gigantic terrain park attracts X-Game wannabes.
The freeriding might not be as in your face as Sunshine Village, but you don’t require avalanche safety equipment to ski it.
From Lake Louise, Canada’s best road trip heads down the 120-mile Icefields Parkway to Jasper National Park and the Marmot Basin ski resort. The Columbia Icefields forms the headwaters of rivers flowing to the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans–the only place on the continent where that happens.
Marmot Basin overlooks the Athabasca Valley, 30 minutes from the town of Jasper. During winter, the valley is the Serengeti of the national park, when herds of big game animals graze along the valley floor.
The ski trails begin in high alpine bowls and then filter through evergreens, falling 3,000 vertical feet. The area is relatively compact compared to Banff skiing, and some of the lifts are as obsolete as a 20-year-old computer. But that’s part of the charm. It’s skiing like it used to be.
Accommodations are centered in the town of Jasper. Nightlife consists of drinking beer with the lifties at the Astoria and Athabasca hotels.
Quebec
– MONTE-SAINTE-ANNE
– LE MASSIF
– MONT TREMBLANT
In 2008, Quebec City celebrates its 400th anniversary. Who knew?
Nowhere in North America do you find skiing so entwined with culture. If you want European ambience–a walled, 17th Century city fortress along the banks of a meandering river–then base yourself in burningly romantic Quebec City, where the cuisine is the best insulation against the cold.
Twenty-five miles from the city is Monte-Sainte-Anne ski area. The scene is not unlike Austria’s culturally rich Innsbruck, with its backdrop of good skiing and boarding just a short distance away. You can also base yourself slopeside.
The mountain is a zinger, offering long, seemingly motionless runs. Trails tumble down a 2,000-foot vertical face furred by maples that bleed syrup in the springtime.
Four miles away is Canada’s largest cross-country ski center with 135 miles of trails.
In the same neighborhood as Monte-Sainte-Anne is snowbound Le Massif, where the slopes look down on extraordinary views of freighters plowing the ice-choked, 12-mile-wide St. Lawrence River, which is Canada’s Mississippi in history and lore.
This upstart resort has the highest vertical drop in eastern Canada and enough moxie to give hard-core Western skiers jelly knees. Think Telluride without the Wild West town.
Fifteen minutes from the ski area is the artsy, storybook village of Baie-Sainte-Paul, which started centuries ago as a fishing village and now houses 30 art galleries. During summer, it attracts hordes of whale watchers.
Mont Tremblant Resort, 75 miles north of Montreal, is one of the oldest ski resorts on the continent, operating its first chairlift in 1939, shortly after Idaho’s Sun Valley debuted the world’s first.
But this season Tremblant is virtually all new.
Its redesigned and constructed European-like villages have earned it the nickname “Paris in the Laurentians.” The ambience comes close to overshadowing the skiing — until you stand on top of the 3,000-foot mountain.
Is this a great country, or what?
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IF YOU GO
INFORMATION
Air Canada and United Airlines offer service to Canadian ski destinations.
For information on skiing British Columbia: 800-HELLO-BC; www.hellobc.com.
For the Banff area: 866-246-5590; www.skibig3.com
For Jasper: 866-952-3816; www.skiingjasper.com
For Quebec: 418-641-6654; www.quebecregion.com/e
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Park City, Utah-based Gerry Wingenbach has skied at hundreds of resorts in dozens of countries.
