I love it when things live up to the hype. Like that time a few Christmasses back when Casablanca was on the telly. I’d never seen it and I was thinking it couldn’t be as good as everyone says, but it was! Well last weekend I had the skiing equivalent of finally seeing Casablanca, I got to ski Red Mountain in Rossland, BC and it was every bit as fantastic as I had been lead to believe. My friend Martin kindly drove the whole way and we were treated to a weekend of sunny skiing above a beautiful cloud inversion.
I first heard about Red when I spent the winter in Fernie. Legend spoke of a wild mountain in the middle of BC which was miles from anywhere. It certainly is a way away, at least 8 hours drive from Calgary and probably about as far from Vancouver. And it’s wild too, a good skiers dream! The resort is spread across two mountains, Red and Granite. Most of the skiing is on Granite and the unique thing in my experience is that from the chairlift you can ski off in any direction – North, South, East or West. Some directions are wilder than others but all feature fantastic tree skiing. The piece of resistance for me was the Pale Face / Powder Fields area. To me this kind of terrain is the most fun you can have with your skis on and I’m just dreaming what it would be like with 20cms of fresh snow on top:
It’s definitely a hill that good skiers will get the most out of: some of the terrain is as steep as you’ll find anywhere but I also think it’s the best place I’ve been for someone who wanted to get better and move into tree skiing and trying some steep stuff. It’s not all insane cliff hucking and trees – there’s great groomers and more moderate trees in the Paradise area. What they need is a run to the Paradise chairlift called Dashboard Light…
It turns out that one Charlie Barrell, who I met on the Nonstopski course Fernie four years ago is back in Canada being a ski bum but this time in Rossland. We met up in the day lodge on the first morning and were lucky enough to get him and his dad as our guides. Turns out his dad, John, was in Rossland last winter doing the Nonstopski course there and loved it so much he came back. Folks, John Barrell will be 69 next month and the dude rrrrrrips! He skis flat out, knows EVERYBODY at the ski hill and all the best lines through the trees. He was a fantastic guide but relentless! Martin and I had to make our excuses on Sunday afternoon just so we could go and cruise something a bit easier for a while and get our breath back!
Rossland itself is lovely and I don’t think you can say that about a lot of Canadian mountain towns. Occasionally there’s a waft of zinc smelting from nearby Trail but usually there’s other things to smell. That part of the Kootenays has a reputation for being extremely laid back and is probably most famous for the quality of the home grown marijuana and as a refuge for American draft dodgers! I seldom want to run away and move to the countryside but Rossland got me thinking. If anyone is willing to chip in $1.5M Martin and I can buy the old bank on the main street and, um, do something with that. As we don’t yet have our own place we stayed at the Mountain Shadow hostel in town which was very friendly and right next door to a very cool snowboard shop called Rossvegas which rather captures the spirit of the place.
[...] called Delilah to get around in. Cumberland seems more than a world away from the Bush but like Rossland, B.C. I immediately felt an urge to give up the rat-race and move there! Watching people unload their [...]