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From The Sunday Times

January 27, 2008

Canada's new ski resort

It’s a long way to British Columbia - but Revelstoke is worth the journey. It's the ultimate ski resort

Sean Newsom

Derek Glowacki, a heli-skiing guide in the town of Revelstoke, in British Columbia, says he has two full-time jobs. “The first is my ski guiding,” he explains. “The second is shovelling snow.”

Driving through the remote Canadian town, you don’t doubt him. Revelstoke lies on the western edge of the Selkirk Mountains, in what is known as British Columbia’s snow belt. It’s close enough to the coast to receive a hefty dose of Pacific storms each winter, but far enough inland to “enjoy” a cold climate. So when those deep depressions roll in, the precipitation falls as snow.

In the middle of January, it’s everywhere. Walls of it line the roads out of town, where the snowploughs have piled it three metres deep. It sits like rubble on the pavements, at the bottom of everyone’s drive. And up in the mountains above town, it frosts every tree, blankets every slope.

No wonder, then, that this wintry little town – population 8,000 – has long been regarded as the perfect place for a ski resort. Last December, after 25 years of rumours, false starts and stop-go planning, it finally got one. That’s when the Revelation gondola and the Stoke chairlift were opened to the public on the side of Mount Mackenzie, and Revelstoke Mountain Resort roared into life.

To date, £11m has been spent installing the new lifts and cutting 27 pistes through the trees. Over the next 15 years, the ambitious plan is to spend £500m on hotels, apartments, restaurants and another 19 lifts, making Revelstoke the second-largest resort in North America.

We shall see. With the US economy on the brink of recession, it’s by no means certain that there will be enough property sales to fund the project. And there’s the small matter of access. Revelstoke is in the middle of nowhere – a five-hour drive to Calgary and 2½ hours from Kelowna, the nearest all-weather airport. When I visited the resort 10 days ago, the door-to-door journey from London took 20 hours.

So, there are plenty of reasons to be sceptical about its prospects. I certainly was before I got there. As soon as I set my skis to the snow, however, my cynicism vanished – for the simple reason that Mount Mackenzie is a fantastic lump of rock on which to ski.

The first thing that strikes you is its sheer size. Topping out at 2,456 metres, its western face drops through 2,000 metres in an unbroken slope, right down to the valley of the Columbia River. You can already ski through 1,443 vertical metres of it, on one of several rip-roaring pistes. My favourite is Snow Rodeo, a 5.5km ribbon of groomed snow that unfurls straight down the fall-line of the slope and seems to go on for ever, through turn after glorious, swooping turn. It’s an instant classic. Few resorts can offer anything like its uninterrupted pitch – by the time you reach the lodge at its base, your thighs will be ready to explode. At the back of the mountain, meanwhile, lies Revelstoke’s secret stash of powder, the North Bowl.

At the moment, the area is not accessible by lift: you have to traverse the mountain to reach it, and spend a minute or two walking out of it at the end of the run. Next season, however, getting there will be more straightforward, thanks to the installation of a new chairlift, and already its potential is obvious. Sheltered from the prevailing wind, it acts as a kind of snow bucket, collecting all the flakes that have been blown off the more exposed western face. After only the lightest snowfall, the powder here can be a metre deep. Widely spaced trees, chutes and the occasional mini-cliff make it a delight for anyone with the skills and courage really to let rip.

The only thing the mountain lacks right now is a large area of nursery slopes and easier pistes for wobbly intermediates. They do exist, but they’re not of the same quality as the steeper runs. Next season, the resort will remedy the situation by opening up a 200-hectare bench of gentle slopes, two-thirds of the way up the mountain.

Does that mean you should wait until next winter? No – not if you’re reasonably confident on skis or snowboard, and fancy a turn in the wilderness. Revelstoke may still be a small resort, but it does not stand alone. Travelling out from Calgary, you drive straight past the ski areas of Lake Louise and Kicking Horse, both of which are worth two or three days of anyone’s time. Taken together, they make a superb road trip, with plenty of dramatic and empty landscapes in between. In fact, the road from Lake Louise to Kicking Horse, through the Banff and Yoho national parks, is probably the most stunning drive in the skiing world.

Those with strong legs and money to burn should head straight for Revelstoke, however, because the lift-serviced terrain isn’t the only attraction here. The town is also home to Selkirk-Tangiers heli-skiing, which operates in a 200,000-hectare reserve in the Selkirk Mountains. It’s an area of glaciers, hidden valleys and monster snowfalls, clocking up more than 12 metres on average every season (roughly twice what Verbier gets). I played for two days in this empty white heaven. It’s not an experience I’ll quickly forget.

Derek Glowacki is one of the guides working for the operation. “Revelstoke’s got the lot now,” he says. “If the weather’s too bad for flying, you can head to the mountain resort to ski. If you’ve come for the resort, and get turned on to the steep and deep while you’re there, you can invest in a day or two in a helicopter. We’ve become a kind of fantasy land for advanced skiers and boarders.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Sean Newsom travelled as a guest of Mark Warner

Travel brief: Mark Warner (0870 770 4226, www.markwarner.co.uk ) has seven-day packages to Canada, split between Lake Louise and Revelstoke, and including several days’ heli-skiing with Selkirk-Tangiers. The cheaper option is to spend four days at Lake Louise and two in Revelstoke, which costs £1,986pp, arriving on March 9. Four days in Revelstoke and two in Lake Louise, arriving on March 14, costs £2,589pp. Other operators include Frontier Travel (020 8776 8709, www.frontier-ski .co.uk ), Ski Independence (0845 310 3030, www.ski-i.com ) and Ski Safari (01273 224060, www.skisafari.com ).

For extended resort reports on Revelstoke, Lake Louise, Kicking Horse and other Canadian resorts, visit www.welove2ski.com .