Sommaire pour Winter 2021 de Ski Canada

► From the longest lift lines in memory to locked-down resorts to the continued rise in alpine touring, the one thing uniting skiers across the country is our hopeful look to next season. Gear brands are in the same gondola. (Wearing a face covering, of course!) Despite challenges with supply chains, manufacturing and prototype testing, plenty of exciting new technology will launch next fall. Some of it’s even in shops now. Völkl Rise Beyond  1 Testing new gear from Völkl’s Rise touring line on Italy’s Monte Al tissimo with Lake Garda for a backdrop reminds us lifts aren’t just closed in Ontario. The new Rise Beyond 96 and 96W shaves more than 100g off Völkl’s well-received predecessor, the 98, with a versatile 3D-radius sidecut offering easier ascents and more memorable…

Adventure-seeking skiers who think they have to look west for bountiful backcountry terrain should rotate their heads 180 degrees. Quebec’s Chic-Chocs are an outpost, a redoubt, a refuge of rusticity at the edge of the otherwise crowded quadrant of this continent. Their rounded and sparsely treed peaks give shape to the Gaspé Peninsula as it juts out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and their snow factory puts out seven metres of snowfall every year. Here are four places to start dreaming about while planning your escape to Eastern Canada’s new, but undisputed, backcountry-skiing paradise. CHIC-CHAC This little company that can, does it all. Backcountry touring? They will guide you where you want to go in the Chic-Chocs starting at Mont Lyall and Mont Porphyre. Cat-and heli-skiing? They’ll fill up…

Every year, tens of thousands of Canadians from many backgrounds take a few introductory lessons or join their skiing buddies at a local “feeder hill.” Surveys done for the Canadian Ski Council (CSC) show that less than 18 per cent of skiers who take these lessons (such as the CSC’s Never Ever program) just don’t return in the next year or two. Why not? “We put skiers into four different buckets: beginners, core, lapsed and revived,” says Paul Pinchbeck, CEO of the Canadian Ski Council. “What the CSC’s research confirmed is that we have a leakage problem, which is marketing speak for ‘people dropped out’.” Pinchbeck has an aggressive five-year plan—he wants to create a million new skiers by 2025. And he says the CSC’s Model for Growth strategy— adopted…

Large numbers of skiers are socially distancing themselves from ski resorts entirely this winter, but how prepared are they for what lies beyond the ropes? Avalanche Skills Training (AST) providers have been seeing a significant uptick in enrolment, which has meant a similar uptick in people exploring new terrain. A probe, shovel, avalanche beacon and introductory AST course might begin to prepare you for the terrain you’ll experience in the backcountry, but none of these fully prepares you for the emotional toll of what you might experience when things go wrong. I spent nearly 20 years as a heli-ski ski guide, at one of the most safety-conscious companies in the business. I worked for an owner who was committed to keeping guests and guides safe in the mountains. We trained…

GET SMART ▸Got time on your hands this winter? Instead of instantly forgetting everything you’ve just seen on Instagram, why not actually retain something by learning about backcountry safety online. Avalanche Canada’s free AvySavvy.ca tutorial teaches the fundamentals of travelling in avalanche terrain, with explanations about preparation, safer route planning, forecasts, rescues, resources and more. All-new videos, animations and quizzes help in this first-steps approach, which takes about four or five hours to complete, and will no doubt give you a leg up on one of many future CAA Avalanche Skills Training Courses. The iconic outdoors brand Arc’teryx also wants you to be safer in the backcountry by going back to school. As this year’s Digital Backcountry Academy wraps up now in the first week of February, Arc’teryx is offering…

The winter of 1980-81 in Whistler was notable for two events. On December 4, 1980 Blackcomb Mountain opened for the first time. And a month later it shut down after one of the warmest and wettest periods in the resort town’s history. It was not the auspicious start the provincial government hoped for when in 1978 it put out a call for proposals for a ski resort adjacent to Whistler Mountain. Fortress Mountain Resorts, a partnership between the Federal Business Development Bank (the Business Development Bank of Canada today) and Aspen Skiing Company and the owner of Alberta’s Fortress Mountain ski area, won the bid. As it turned out, 20th Century Fox, the film studio flush off the success of Star Wars, had just bought Aspen Skiing. Hugh Smythe, a…