Drive the Powder Highway
Scenario: Big Winter in B.C.
This past November was one of the snowiest on record in British Columbia. Which means that even if the storms slow down, there's still going to be truckloads of snow this March especially in the Kootenay region, a damp swath of mountains in the southeastern part of the province. So book a ticket to Cranbrook Delta now flies direct from Salt Lake City and spin along the Powder Highway, a 660-mile "loop" with more than 50 resorts and backcountry-, cat-, and heli-skiing operations. My buddy Luke and I sampled the goods a few years ago. We started at Whitewater Resort (skiwhitewater.com), a three-lift mountain outside of Nelson that receives more than 40 feet of snow annually. Then we spent a few days in Fernie (skifernie.com), an unsung destination with some of the best tree skiing I've seen, before looping back to Red Mountain (redresort.com), an empty, cliff-strewn resort. Our conclusion: The route honors its good name, and we've been plotting our return ever since. Especially considering the 2007 addition of Revelstoke Mountain Resort (revelstokemountainresort.com), with more than 5,600 feet of vert, the most on the continent. This I gotta see.
Photographer: Courtesy of Doug LePage/Whitewater Ski Resort
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