Table of contents for Buyer's Guide 2022 in Ski Canada

Club Med St. Moritz, Switzerland January 21-29, 2022 SOLD OUT! Alternate Swiss resort to come... New trip! Chamonix, France, March 4-12, 2022 Join Editor Iain and Instruction Editor Nigel in the shadows of Mont Blanc and the striking alpine surroundings of the birthplace of alpinism. › 7 nights’ accommodation at the historic, hip and ideally located Gustavia Hotel › 7 full breakfasts › 5 full dinners › 6-day Mont Blanc Unlimited lift pass with more than 1,000 km of pistes! › 40% discount on rentals at trip sponsor Intersport by Pitte › local hotel taxes and gratuities BONUS: everyone’s a winner from generous swag sponsors Bollé, Buff, Glerups, Gogglesoc & Swany! Choose from 10 ski domains each day including Grands Montets, Brévent-Flégère, Le Tour, Les Houches, Aiguille du Midi and…

Dave loved skiing, climbing and beer, which he drank in copious quantities after each neardeath experience. We called him “Chopper Dave” since he spent so much time in helicopters—as a patient. Dave and I climbed and skied together all over the world. Life with Dave was a series of entertaining mishaps and near misses. He was a truly terrible skier, and only a marginally better climber. He was constantly lost, or about to be lost. He would be right there with the group one second, and the next, gone like a will-o’-the-wisp into the gloaming. Once, when I was barely 24 hours late from a classic north-face climb in the Alps, I returned to the campsite to find that Dave had sold my tent to pay for the beer he…

If you think the skis here are looking a little thin—at least where waist widths are concerned—don’t worry, we’ve got the deeper days covered, too. Ski Canada’s Fall 2021 issue includes the Powder Buyer’s Guide-12 pages of new gear devoted to fresh snow, freeride skiing and freedom in the backcountry. Coverage includes a dozen ski reviews tested in Mount Washington Alpine Resort’s epic Outback and in the backcountry of Vancouver Island’s rugged Island Alps. But if you can’t wait, here’s a preview of some of the highlights. • The biggest Salomon QST freeride ski loses girth and gains incredible versatility with the new 112mm QST Blank. • Review of the WNDR Alpine Vital, likely the most environmentally friendly ski available. • No category of ski gear has seen more innovation…

Almost 40 years ago, Ski Canada was the first magazine in North America to test skis when we started doing laps on next year’s gear at Marmot Basin above Jasper. We’ve moved many times over the decades with Mount Washington on Vancouver Island now hosting all the hard workers. No really, it is work! Okay, we do enjoy it. But mostly we’re in it for you. Our ultimate goal with the ski reviews that follow is to help you have more fun when you’re out skiing. We believe finding the right ski will make you a better skier. To that end, last spring we researched all the new skis set to launch this autumn, handpicked the 40 most interesting new models, and gathered them together at Mount Washington. With the…

It’s impossible to look back on last winter without considering the ways COVID-19 impacted people’s mountain recreation habits. While some ski areas managed to go above and beyond to keep the lifts turning and guests safe, others were hamstrung by tougher restrictions and provincial health orders. That left die-hard skiers with few options: either go against non-essential travel recommendations, or take matters into their own hands—and start walking uphill. Many chose the latter, and popular ski-touring destinations became more crowded than St. Peter’s Square on Good Friday. Across the country, ski-touring equipment was walking off the shelves as more and more people began exploring the backcountry. And in the process, a few learnt that one way to maximize the experience was by using a mechanical advantage to access areas that…

For good reason, most people remember Mike Wiegele for his renowned heli-ski operation in Blue River, B.C. I remember him as my coach, mentor and inspiration during the years I worked at the Lake Louise Ski school. I was at the Lake Louise Ski Club meeting the day Mike was introduced as the new ski school director. He had arrived in Canada only a few years earlier, so although his English was challenging the Austrian looked very professional in his ski sweater and jet-black hair—and that’s what mattered. The year was 1965. It was Mike’s guidance and example that set me on the path to a lifetime career in the ski teaching business. The beginning was inauspicious. His wife, Bonnie, had hired me to work in the ski shop, but…

“Ski fast. Take chances.” This is Guillaume Otis’s advice at the top of our first run in the Callaghan Valley. It also turns out to be the theme of our four days of ski touring in the backcountry area near Whistler. Among the crew standing beside me, drooling at the untracked canvas of 15 cm of new snow, are an up-and-coming freeride ski competitor and his coach. I don’t know it yet, but things are about to get exciting. Otis’s advice is not meant as an invitation to get reckless—it’s our best strategy to stay safe. There are small pockets of windslab, the snow is deep and the terrain steep. “The best way to manage small avalanches and sluffing snow is to ski fast,” he tells us. “Who wants to…

The jubilance I felt as we crossed the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge was briefly interrupted by a drowsy observation from the back seat: “This place is a ghost town.” Not a saloon-door-swingin’-on-rusty-ol’- hinges kind of ghost town, or even a regular town populated by ghosts. The municipality in question—Gatineau, Quebec, on a Thursday night last February—was as deserted as it was snow-encrusted. That emptiness brought to mind all the shuttered ski areas near our distant Toronto home. Eight weeks, two days and 17 hours earlier—on Boxing Day to be precise—the Ontario government closed every hill in the province in a misguided attempt to limit the spread of COVID-19, a deadly virus that is vastly more transmissible indoors (where ski hill aren’t), in crowds (that don’t form on ski hills), and by people…

I think we can all agree: Staying on one’s feet is the fundamental goal in skiing. Now, isn’t it nice when we all agree about things? The feat of remaining upright while sliding down a snowy hillside depends on refined use of our sense of balance. Our balance system monitors our position while the brain adjusts our joints and muscles based on how the balance system tells the brain we are positioned at any given moment. I won’t bore you with the details, since I don’t understand them, and also because it involves the dreaded brain, which is something I always find best to avoid talking about. The balance system monitors our position using our eyes and inner ear (which, weirdly, is just under the brain). If we tip our…

PUSS IN SKI BOOTS We know all about snowcats, cat tracks, even CARCA avalanche rescue cats, and of course everyone knows of cat-skiing. Until we found this particular grey and white feline named Gary, though, we’d never seen a cat ski. At his home hill, Nakiska, Gary rides with his own season pass on the shoulder of his human James Eastham. Porter Eastham also maintains Gary’s super-popular Instagram and TikTok accounts @greatgramsofgary. Gary started alpine skiing a couple years ago after gaining confidence on a cross-country ski trail. With good grooming and gradual conditioning, Gary has trained Eastham to carry him on all kinds of outdoor adventures near his home in Canmore, Alberta. And it’s been downhill purrfection since. _RYAN STUART PRIX FIXE IN THE CHARLEVOIX Long before our little…

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…

With all the gloomy predictions, who would have thought that last winter would prove to be an excellent one for the ski industry. Ontario excepted. Looking for an alternative to sun vacations, parties and mall time, lapsed and avid skiers bought passes and gear, often in record numbers. ULLR spread his wealth fairly evenly; just about everywhere had a good year for snow. Beyond a few isolated outbreaks and shutdowns, most ski resorts in North America operated with few constraints, while we traded time walking a conference centre full of the latest and greatest new products for multi-media Zoom calls. But that doesn’t mean the ski industry is emerging from the pandemic totally unscathed. With so much uncertainty, many brands reduced the number of new products they’re launching for this…

Talk to mountain resort planner Paul Mathews for five minutes and the conversation will soon be peppered with words like “brownfield,” “greenfield,” “terrain capacity analysis” and “environmental impact assessment.” Mathews has run Whistler-based Ecosign Mountain Resort Planners since 1975 and his firm’s input had been critical in shaping Whistler Blackcomb’s Master Plan in the 1980s and ‘90s. But entire years might pass when he won’t ski more than a handful of days on his backyard slopes. That’s because he’s usually guiding his planning team to create something out of nothing—transforming raw mountainsides into brand-new four-season destination resorts in locales as diverse and far away as Russian, China and Norway. It’s hard to believe, given the number of times an artist’s conception of a new ski resort pops up, that, according…

As rivulets of the icing-sugar layer of overnight, blown-in snow sluffed softly beneath my skis, I swooped another vertical-devouring arc on a broad and seemingly endless pitch. I felt almost guilty at the sheer amount of terrain disappearing with each turn. The feeling was fleeting, however, since I was alone on the immense expanse. The whole slope was “my line,” and as I pulled up at the bottom the only sound was the murmur of the grains of snow rolling to a stop. Seriously steep; at the top I’d experienced one of those dizzying valley-bottom-between-my-ski-tips moments. In the old narrow-ski days, one would have been hop-turning. Today with rockered 185s, it was smooth skid-carving the whole way. I was into my fifth lap of what I consider the ski area’s…

Skiing is fundamentally the same regardless of snow surface, terrain or steepness. We try to stay balanced in the middle of the outside ski so it will keep turning. We achieve this by making adjustments to how we move based on our prediction of what the next few seconds are going to bring. Imagine yourself on a groomed surface heading into powder. Your skis are most likely going to disappear as your boots push through the new snow. There will be lots of friction pulling your feet back under you. Your body, on the other hand, is not subject to this increased friction, and since it has mass and momentum, it’s going to want to carry on at the same speed it was travelling before entering the powder. If you…