Rank the BC Interior Ski Areas for Average Quantity of Snowfall

[whiteroomaddict]

if you are used to LCC and BCC, then i'd say stick around kicking horse, revelstoke, and if you were able to make the drive to whitehorse that would be interesting, snowquality gets worse as you get further south and west towards the ocean, think waking up with 12" fresh reported, and when you get to the lift at 830 its raining all the way to the peak, stay away from whistler area, unless your just sightseeing, if its not snowing in utah, its pry puking up in BC, plan your trip around that if you can.

[el hefe]

^^^ I did the same. Went with intention of hooking into that chute but was not confident enough with stability and my partners shat when they realized how steep the top was before cutting left into the chute, big time line.

I saw tracks there in the spring! Early april?

Some Kicking horse fun:

pretty much 3500 vert of alpine into a giant slide path, easy traverse back to the gondi:











Check: www.skiinggolden.com for tons of photos and aerial shots!

[LeeLau]

TD - I looked at that N face too. Just didnt have the nuts to do it given the same reasons you described. Plus I had very rudimentary snowpack data for that area too. Next year will probably go look at it again

[Dside11-11]

It's been said before: A little poo just slipped out.

[skibiker]

Man, that bitch is steep!

[skiman]

[QUOTE=Dside11-11;1948300]It's been said before: A little poo just slipped out.

Be nice if Kicking Horse would let a little poo slip out. No response to email or phone call into inquiry of snowfall totals. LAME!

[taynton]

Check powderwatch.com or .ca. They link to something called ____ Pillow Data, which is a forestry service to predict stream and river flooding in the spring. Good stuff for snow depths not exactly at a ski hill, but usually close by.

My intuition would be:

Whitewater
Revy
Powderking
Fernie
Red
KHMR
Big White
Silver Star
Sun Peaks
Panorama
Kimberly

Posting shots like those of Revy should be illegal in summer.

[alberta_hoser]

A few friends of mine descended Mackenzie's north face near the end of the year. They hooked the line into the coulior that leads back to the resort boundries.

I stood at the top back in Feb. with clear sky's low avi and pretty confident about stability. However I decided to drop the south face back to the resort in question of what a terrible year in terms of major avalanche events and deaths which had took place leading up to the month. Perhaps another day. I don't have my personal computer with me but I have a shit load of recon photos of the face I will post when I get back.

Photos from on top? I'd be interested to see some. Anybody who has been up there have an guess how steep it is? 45-50 +?


I decdied to make this post because I'm moving there in 2 weeks. I must be gnar enough.

[skiman]

[QUOTE=skiman;1956853]

It's been said before: A little poo just slipped out.

Be nice if Kicking Horse would let a little poo slip out. No response to email or phone call into inquiry of snowfall totals. LAME!

Got an email response from Kicking Horse today, saying that they average
700cm/season. That is less than 280". That is a lot less than I expected!

[snoboy]

KHMR isn't exactly known for it's abundant powder. If you live there, you'll get the good days, and have a good season, but I have not been lucky on my two trips there.

OTOH, we got 691cm/269" last year, for an average-ish year, and it was a good season... of course they stopped measuring at the beginning of April, and I skied my ass off through an incredible April pow glut. we probably had more like 825 by the end of the season.

[Ted Striker]

el jefe's post = best stoke I've seen all summer. Bar none.

Agreed! His assessment of the southern BC interior hills is spot on too.

[teamdirt]

behold the north face

[teamdirt]

the top of the line is a rollover cornice. not exactly easy to step out on to and look down. Gaging 45-50 degree on top. probably similar to Bre-X in the Dive.


Best scope option from top is to go at absolute low stability and belay out onto face to take a gander and to perform snow analysis. I would almost prefer two anchors, especially if you can drag one anchor up there that weighs in twice your weight. Keep in mind that the peak is higher then any other mountain around and is subject to more weathering so it could be adversly different then stability reports predict. Approach with caution.

[el hefe]

That cornice is scary...

[srozing]

behold the north face

That actually makes it look a lot less intimidating than the previous shot. If you stay skiers left away from all the cliffs it would probably be doable.

What is the vert?

[Eldo]

That actually makes it look a lot less intimidating than the previous shot. If you stay skiers left away from all the cliffs it would probably be doable.

I think the issue is not how intimidating the face is but how intimidating the avalanche conditions are. That is not a place to be taking chances with snow stability.

[teamdirt]

That actually makes it look a lot less intimidating than the previous shot. If you stay skiers left away from all the cliffs it would probably be doable.

What is the vert?

Yes it is doable. In fact it has now been skied and snowboarded several times as of late this season. The problem is you need to hit it in perfect stable conditions as the sluff and terrain consequences are high. Perfect conditions probably only happen a few days a year and even if they do exist, stepping out and judging that kind of terrain with a inner contenental snowpack is a mix of balls, good luck, stupidity and cockiness. Perfect stability never exists this far inland.

A sporty line for sure, but you must be wise inorder to be able to ski for another day...

Greg Hill and Scott Newsome shredded it way back in the day dubbing it "April Fools"

[CookieMonster]

On topic: With respect to snow quality, I think the snow quality is excellent in most places in the interior, including RMR, Whitewater, Valhalla Park, etc. I'm more interested in the mountaineering and mountain travel aspects of skiing than how many powder days I get so I don't have the same concerns about snow quality as others. Is the snow better overall at one place? This is a really tough question. There is some thought, mostly because of the quantity of precipitation, that the snow climate in the Revelstoke and Rogers Pass area has a stronger maritime influence than the northern or southern Columbias. For overall quality, well I can't remember the study performed near Rogers Pass that actually tallied which winters were more continental, more maritime, and more transitional ... however the conclusion is that most of these mountain ranges can have winters that are more continental, more maritime, etc. So as others have noted, overall quality must vary a great deal. Wasn't 2003, with all those terrible avalanches, a more continental year with a thinner snowpack than usual? Point: not sure there is an accurate way to rate snow quality across that many locations across the interior of BC except in extremely general terms that wouldn't provide much useful information.

Off topic: RMR. It's a fun line and not remotely as scary as it looks in that full frontal photo, provided you keep left as prescribed above. Ended up skiing not too aggressively, and maybe a third of the way down, to just below the ridge on the right side of the "less-scary" photo because I didn't want to skin all the way back up from the bottom of the drainage. Assuming instability is neither widespread nor easily triggered, the other problem with skiing this line is the frequently insufferable clouds; I was at Revelstoke twice this year and the clouds couldn't make up their mind if they were going to stay or go. For example, at the gondola exit, you can enjoy clear skies and sun for hours while clouds roll over the mountains above the chairlift exit. And I don't mean "clouds" in general; I am referring to specific, irritating clouds that form over the peaks at the top of the resort. Maybe it's a cap cloud from all the cold snow or maybe the cloud is formed by lifting. Maybe that's just where clouds are born. In any case, the clouds disappear for a few minutes, reform, disappear again a short while later, etc. So even when instability is low, the clouds might not cooperate.

For Leel: I really enjoy your trip reports.