Ski Canada Fall 2021

Life’s no holiday so when you finally take one this winter, choose the best—Switzerland. Skiing in and among Europe’s highest mountains never disappoints in a country speckled by glittering 4,000m peaks, snowsure glaciers and charming car-free villages. Top quality, superb service and a complete range of styles and prices are on the Swiss menu: from affordable two-star family hotels with breakfast and dinner included, to ski-in/ski-out high-mountain huts, to blow-out grand hotels. Whatever your style or budget, raise a fork to fondue in a weather-worn wooden barn, a sparkling glass to five-star decadence with a level of service the world’s still trying to emulate, or an après-ski cup of the most delicious hot chocolate on earth. Magic? That’s Switzerland! Valais–Matterhorn Region, Portes du Soleil Looking for a big bang for…

The best part of autumn is researching, planning and dreaming where the family might go skiing in the winter. Coming from a part of the country where winter didn’t much happen for us last year, we’re part of the sizable pent-up demand of all travellers, including skiers, who are now booking winter escapes. Our extended family isn’t locked into a specific list of potential ski areas with a ski pass, so pretty much anywhere goes as far as destinations. But, since a lot of our skiing involves backcountry adventures these days, we often start by looking at guiding options. Skiing with a qualified mountain or ski guide has fundamental benefits, such as showing you places you’d never find on your own, offering tips and humour—but most important, bringing you home…

Skiing in the 90s ► Ski Canada’s Buyer’s Guide 2022 issue is fantastic. Full of current ski area development news, a good view of European resorts, and a good comparison report between Lake Louise and Marmot. But it’s the look-back sections that got me reminiscing: the beginning of the Cubco release binding in the mid-’40s and soft leather boots. And, of course, no snowboarding. When I started skiing on the banks of the Red River with the Winnipeg Ski Club as an 18-year-old, my boots were soft leather, laced up and fitted into bindings with absolutely no release at all, which resulted in a sprained ankle. What tremendous progress in equipment today, making it hard to get hurt unless one is too daring or careless. Your look at heli-skiing brings…

► After 47 years apart, the Gertsch family is reuniting with CMH Heli-Skiing. Swiss-born Rudi Gertsch helped Austrian-born Hans Gmoser start CMH in the 1960s, before Gertsch lifted off to start Purcell Heli-Skiing in 1974. His son Jeff and daughter-in-law Katie eventually took over the daily operations. Last summer, the Gertsch family decided to sell Purcell to Alterra Mountain Company, a ski resort conglomerate that also owns Ontario’s Blue Mountain, Mont Tremblant in Quebec and CMH Heli-Skiing & Summer Adventures. “Everything has come full circle,” says Rudi Gertsch. “I have a profound feeling of professional satisfaction at this point in my life, knowing that the story of our business reaches back to those common origins, and will now stretch forward into the future.” Affable Jeff will remain a lead guide…

When it comes to skiing, I’ve never been one to keep score. Take ski racing, for instance—the one discipline of the sport that I’ve actively avoided all these years. I once “lost” a dual-slalom against a woman from Minnesota who was old enough to be my mother, and who charitably said, “You would have beaten me if you hadn’t been racing on those fat skis.” Ouch. Our world is increasingly ruled by numbers, except that now it’s known as “data.” And although my dozens of social media followers might find it hard to believe, I actually can enjoy a day of skiing without snapping a turn sequence on my smartphone. The one function that I make sure I never use (although oddly enough, the data is still recorded) is Vail Resorts’…

It isn’t every day that you get to witness the birth of a ski area. And depending on who you talked to in Revelstoke, B.C., December 22, 2007, was either a day that you’d been salivating over for three decades to take place, or it was going to spell Armageddon for a small-town way of life. For that was the day that the spanking-new Revelstoke Mountain Resort turned on the power and fired up two lifts to open the most anticipated ski destination in North America. And what a day it was. Snow fell like giant sacks of confetti were being unceremoniously ripped open from the clouds above. Young guns from Whistler, Rossland, Banff, and as far away as Tahoe and Colorado were there—floating through thigh-deep fluff, flying blind off…