By Julie Brown
The Powder Highway—British Columbia, from Nelson to Revelstoke and Everything in Between.
I jumped in a red helicopter. The engine started and the blades whipped around so fast they became a blur. The delicate body whirred and vibrated. Suddenly it lifted, and the pilot flew above the trees, dipped down into the wind, and soared across the lake.
We followed the shoreline. The pilot pointed out a moose standing in a field below. The clouds were high and the light was a dark purple. From a bird’s eye, trees were a pattern of rough circles on a white canvas. One peak rose up in the distance, slide paths tumbled down several angles and a knife-edge ridge meandered to the peak.
The Powder Highway. The words have a mythical undertone. A ShangriLa of wintery pine tree paradise and marshmallow mountains. It’s actually a very real loop of highways in the Kootenay Rockies that contains the highest concentration of ski areas, snowcat operations, heli ops, and backcountry huts and lodges in North America. The skiing here is infinite, especially off the mountain passes. The most famous, Rogers Pass, connects the towns of Revelstoke and Golden via the Trans-Canada Highway. The Gothics, Adamants, Selkirks, Bugaboos, Valhallas—they are all big and buried under 300 inches of snowfall every winter.
The Skiing
Low tide at the beginning of the season yields features that are buried for most of the year. The pillows haven’t quite formed yet. When they do, the potential is obvious—stacks of rocks on top of each other, perfect for bounding down. On the winter solstice at Revelstoke, the snow was soft with a crunch underneath and some moguls in the trees. But that didn’t stop us from making huge, committed turns around big rocks.
When it snows, the forest is so silent it has a sound. Dampness swallows any echo. Voices are rich and clear. Low clouds weave through mountains and push skiers to the trees, which add contrast and cover from high-alpine storms. When the snow fills in, it feels like sugar. The kind you cut through easily and spills below your tracks. Open it up, and the skiing feels like flying, effortless speed and gravity pulling you down—the lightness of being.
The towns in interior British Columbia are remote with no major population centers nearby. Sure, over the holidays it’ll get crowded. But most days feel empty with hardly a lift line. At 3 p.m., decent soft snow can still be found under the chair.
Every ski resort on the Powder Highway deserves its own vacation. Each is unique in the skiing, the culture, and the experience. Here’s a tasting menu to get a sample of them all:
- Fernie—3,550 feet of vert, 2,500 acres of terrain—Known for being a little less known.
- Kicking Horse—4,133 feet of vert, 2,800 acres of terrain—Kicking Horse has the terrain and the vert to rival the biggest ski destinations on the planet. But nobody seems to know that yet.
- Kimberley—2,465 feet of vert, 1,800 acres of terrain—Known for nice, laid back Canadians.
- Panorama—4,019 feet of vert, 2,847 acres of terrain—With 75 percent of terrain dubbed beginner or intermediate, Panorama is the place to take the family.
- Red Mountain Resort—2,919 feet of vert, 4,200 acres of terrain—Red just added a thousand acres of terrain to its boundary, including access to Grey Mountain. They also offer inbounds cat skiing.
- Revelstoke—5,620 feet of vert, 3,121 acres of terrain—Known for the biggest vert in North America. Enough said.
- Whitewater Ski Resort—2,044 feet of vert, 1,184 acres of terrain—Known for hippies skiing in the steep glades, slow two-seaters, and some of the best ski resort food in the world. (I’m serious. Check out Whitewater’s cookbooks.)
The Journey:
More mountains than people, the Powder Highway is a place to find escape from the hectic day-to-day of our busy lives. Skinning to a hut in the woods where you can stay for a week or longer disconnects you from technology and everything else in the world, giving you the space and quiet to think and find inspiration to climb and ski some of the biggest mountains of your life.
With resort, backcountry, cat, and heli skiing, the options are as endless as your time and budget allow. For American roadsters, cross the border north of Spokane and see where the road—and the snow—takes you. Or if the border is too far, fly into Calgary or Kelowna and rent some wheels. Make it a van or an RV, and camp on the mountain passes.
If you drive up from Washington, you will hit Rossland first, home to Red Mountain Resort. Continue north on Highway 6 to Nelson and Whitewater and then on to Revelstoke. Take State Route 1 across Rogers Pass to Golden and Kicking Horse, and then south on 95 toward Invermere, Kimberley, and Fernie to close the loop.
To fuel the drives, I highly recommend donuts and coffee from Tim Hortons, a solid road trip playlist, and four-wheel drive. The Powder Highway is a magnet for winter, often cold and stormy. Watch the weather and road conditions because the passes often close during blizzards, in which case, time it right to be at a ski resort with good tree skiing.
One of the best laps on the best day of the trip was on a run named Sweetness. It started a few hundred yards above treeline and I opened up my turns to take advantage of the overhead conditions and the faceshots. Lower in the trees, I popped off a couple pillows and landed in snow so deep I didn’t feel any impact on landing. At the bottom of the mountain, I skied a traverse through a quiet meadow. All was silent, all was still. Those are the moments that make it worthwhile to travel so far north.
