Table of contents for Buyer's Guide 2024 in Ski Canada

Wondering where to ski this winter? Arm yourself with a Mountain Collective Pass and the answer quickly becomes: “Just about anywhere.” With seven of Canada’s best resorts and several additional dream destinations in the United States, the ways that a Mountain Collective Pass could transform your winter are now greater than ever. With one purchase, Mountain Collective passholders buy themselves two days of skiing at any of two dozen world-class destinations. There are no blackout days at any of the resorts, and once you’ve enjoyed your two days you can take advantage of a 50-percent discount on any subsequent day passes. The roster is a lineup of the best of the best resorts in Canada, the United States, Europe, Chile and Australia. As they say, “It’s always snowing somewhere in…

Last January, it looked like Cole Richardson’s young freeskiing career was going to be cut short. The Canmore native and Lake Louise local stormed onto the ski scene five years ago at age 16. Cole’s prowess at combining daring, bigmountain descents, high speeds and park tricks quickly made him a regular in ski movies and on magazine covers (including the Winter 2021 issue of Ski Canada). His rise stopped abruptly last year after a high-speed collision with a Japanese tree that he described as “near fatal.” The crash lacerated his pancreas and liver, shattered his elbow and damaged nerves in his shoulder. After five hours of life-saving surgery, he spent a month in a Japanese hospital with a tangle of tubes keeping him alive. Doctors told him it would be…

The 20th century’s main management guru Peter Drucker once argued that “you can’t improve what you don’t measure.” Adherents of the Carv Digital Ski Coach would likely agree. Carv quantifies skiing performance by assigning a numerical value to how well you carve a turn. The system’s footbeds are embedded with dozens of sensors that measure and transmit a slew of performance metrics to the Carv app, which you’ve downloaded onto your smartphone. Carv skiers pay $249 for the hardware, plus $259 for annual app access. While smartphone apps such as SkiTracker measure skier speed, distance and amount of vertical skied, Carv aims to actually improve your skiing. After analyzing the footbed data, Carv beams immediate ski tips directly into your wireless headphones. It’s like having your very own private instructor…

SHORT TURNS From its billboard welcome signs to the recently renovated Olympic Museum, upstate New York’s Lake Placid isn’t shy about sharing the legacies of the Winter Games it hosted in 1931 and 1980. But for visitors heading to nearby Whiteface Mountain, the many motels lining the town’s main drag remain the most useful remnants of Olympic glories. Many of these old-school lodgings still look like sets for That ‘70s Show. Until recently that included the Summit Hotel Resort & Suites, which was reborn as the Bluebird Lake Placid in early 2023 after an impressive update that mixes natureinspired style with retro design. Other nearby lodgings, such as Placid Bay, Town House and The Boha, have been revamped in similarly stylish fashion, with still more across the northeastern U.S. going from…

Of all sports I attempted to introduce my kids to as a single parent, downhill skiing was by far the most challenging. For our inaugural ski, I took my sons to a family-friendly resort west of Toronto, a cleared swath of the Oakridges Moraine that barely qualifies as a hill. After the trek from the parking lot to the lodge— two pairs of skis and boots, one toddler insisting on being transported, one ambling five-year-old plus miscellaneous—we were all ready for lunch. Then came the traverse across the base to the bunny hill. As my older son shuffled along on his skis, the younger one ogled and stumbled, helping himself to regular mittfuls of snow. An eternity later, we arrived at the base of the negligible slope. Having given up…

In March, we hauled dozens of skis up to Vancouver Island’s Mount Washington Alpine Resort for two days of ski testing. For the fourth year in a row, the ski area and Mother Nature combined to grace us with ideal conditions. Ten centimetres of overnight snow for both days, mostly sunny skies and temperatures just below freezing provided the perfect mix of conditions for testing skis. With no lift lines, our team of testers—drawn from the local ski community and resort employees—crushed out laps on immaculate groomers, down powder covered pistes, through the trees and bumps and everything in between. When the flakes settled, quads were burning, all the skis were tested and it all went off without a hitch. Watch our social channels and website (skicanadamag.com, @skicanadamag) for video…

TAOS SUSTAINED The sun is high over the Sangre de Cristos, the air a stinging -15°C. A warm pretzel the size of a pizza is set on a table next to an adobe-style fireplace and a steaming strüdel drips with whipped cream. A tight group of skiers from New England clinks steins to toast their morning’s ski— it’s only 11 a.m. They’re the same skiers seen here in the Bavarian Restaurant yesterday and the day before that. In fact, they’re very nearly the only skiers at Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico, on this sparkling January day. The other standouts, a foursome from Colorado’s Breckenridge, crash in through the doors and shake off their puffies, warm breaths blowing on cold hands. The usual slopeside conversation strikes up: Where are you from?…

FIS World Cup ski racing will return to Tremblant after a 40-year absence. A women’s giant slalom is set for December 2-3, 2023. It will be the alpine circuit’s only Canadian stop, with World Cup speed events at Lake Louise being recently cancelled. Tremblant last hosted a World Cup in 1983 and is now on the roster for the next three years, thanks to campaigning by an Alpine Canada/Tremblant delegation that included former racer and Tremblant local Erik Guay. The group convinced FIS of the resort’s capacity to deliver a world-class competition by successfully hosting a Nor-Am Cup race last February and upgrading the Flying Mile run to comply with World Cup safety standards. Known in Europe as the White Circus, the World Cup tour draws huge crowds. To keep…

SHORT TURNS The ever-elastic universe of multi-passes has stretched and shrunk (mostly stretched) since our last comparison ran in Winter 2023. With early-season passrelated news dropping faster than Sam Kuch into a couloir, many readers are left still wondering which pass to choose for 2023/24: Epic, Ikon, Indy, Mountain Collective or Powder Alliance? As these passes typically go offthe market around late November there’s still time to purchase—here’s the latest news: INDY: Summertime sales of Indy passes were so hot they were paused to allow bean counters time to “evaluate capacity for the upcoming season.” At presstime, the best a prospective passholder could do was sign up for a waitlist in anticipation of a future release. Indy spokesman Doug Fish told Ski Canada the pass expects to add at least…

Join editor-in-chief Iain MacMillan, bon vivant Nigel Harrison, and the annual assemblage of Ski Canada magazine readers for another grand adventure to the Alps! ski canada Readers' Trips DAVOS/KLOSTERS Switzerland Davos-Klosters, Switzerland Jan 27 - Feb 4, 2024 Join the royals for: > 7 nights in the posh digs of 4-star Hotel Grischa (Adjacent to the Jakobshorn cable car and Davos Platz railway station) > 6-day all-areas pass for more than 50 lifts, 1,284m vertical, longest marked piste: 15km > 2 days group guiding > 7 buffet breakfasts > 5 dinners (new this year: “Town Dine Around,” a memorable supper sampling that includes your first glass of wine and a fondue high in the alpine) > 2 visits to Eau-Là-Là Wellness Centre > Multiple non-ski distractions in this world-famous winter sports town: curling, cross-country skiing, learn…

BUYER’S GUIDE 2024 "What’s the best ski this year?” This question always makes us cringe here at Ski Canada. We want to be helpful and apply the terabytes of ski information floating around in our grey matter. But it’s such a hard question to answer, especially if we’ve never seen the person ski. It’s one reason we don’t pick a S.O.T.Y. (ski of the year). The other is that it’s a terrible acronym. The goal of our ski test is not for us to find a winner. Rather it is to help you find a winner—your new favourite ski. It’s why we recruit a test team of people who span the spectrum, from former racers to slipsliding park rats, ski instructors who love narrow skis to weekend warriors who think…

MODESTY BECOMES IT As January 2023 was coming to a close, locals at Whitewater Ski Resort were choosing to focus ahead to February. The last week had seen two of the three chairlifts break down at the same time. Whitewater adapted easily by running a shuttle van to keep most terrain open and locals seemed typically laid back about the disruption, but there was more. It had only snowed twice that week, for a total of less than 30cm. That counts as a drought at the top of this snowy valley 20 minutes up the road from funky Nelson, British Columbia. Whitewater often comes in at No. 2 among major Canadian resorts for the most annual snowfall, ahead of Revelstoke, Fernie and Red Mountain. It’s usually behind Whistler, but it’s…

Over consecutive snowy weekends last February, our man in Ontario tested two portable fire pits in ski hill parking lots. “During the pandemic,” says Adam Bisby, “I noticed that many snowseekers started to après outside. As a dedicated barbecuer and staunch critic of overpriced burgers, this was a trend I felt I could embrace.” Testing the Solo Stove and Biolite’s techie FirePit+, our intrepid tailgater discovered more than the surprising combustibility of Ski Canada back issues. To varying extents, both of the portable mini stoves grill certain foods nicely, clean up easily, are easy on the eyes, and produce very little smoke thanks to battery powered fans and clever air-flow designs that burn wood efficiently and cleanly. On the con side, says Bisby, “postBBQ the stoves made my vehicle smell…

SHORT TURNS Did you know Colorado has a traction law? Delay traffic with a wreck on a snowy highway in a vehicle without winter tires and you’re subject to a hefty fine, rental or not. Quebec requires winter tires all season long, and most highways in British Columbia do, too. It stands to reason car rental companies at airports near major ski towns would equip all cars with winter tires— but they don’t. During a Ski Canada ski trip via Denver last season, only one agency offered a “reservation” for winter tires, at an added cost of US$20 per day, with no guarantee a vehicle with those tires would actually be available on the day of pick-up. And what do car rental agencies have against roof racks? Enter Turo, an…

Alpine racing is a family affair for World Cup winners like Jack Crawford and Valérie Grenier. Supporting kids in high-performance sports demands a lot of time, money and sacrifice. But what does it really take to raise a champion? We asked Jack, Val, and their moms Laurel Scott Crawford and Nathalie Bourdon-Grenier. Laurel, you have two kids, Jack and Candace, skiing for Canada’s national team. How did you and your husband manage your time between the two of them growing up? Laurel: Early on, it was figure skating for Candace and hockey for Jack before they both decided to really focus on ski racing at Georgian Peaks. Their friends were a big part of it. Then, once they reached the higher performance levels, my husband Angus and I had to each…

BUYER’S GUIDE 2024 The biggest hazard we’ve encountered while researching and writing Ski Canada’s Buyer’s Guide isn’t found on a double black diamond or while flying off XL terrain park jumps. It happens in the lift line. You see, our editors make good use of time spent slowly shuffling forward by conducting market research. We scan the corral, checking out other skiers. The skis they’re on. The clothes they’re wearing. And all their accessories. Are those spherical or cylindrical goggles? Wearing tinted lenses, most of the time, lingering inspections go unnoticed. But every now and then we get busted. “I was looking at her tips! Her ski tips,” one sheepish editor will insist to his wife, usually a touch too vigorously. “Seriously, it’s my job.” Here at Ski Canada, we…

January: DAVOS, Switzerland January 27th to February 4th • Deluxe stay: four-star Hotel Grischa • Tasty eats: full breakfasts and gourmet dinearound dinners program • 6-day lift pass, two days guiding, 270km of pistes, more than 2,000m vertical drop. (Hotel Grischa is 50m from Jakobshorn cable car and Davos Platz train station.) • Air Canada non-stop Toronto-Zurich and transfers included. $5,275 dbl. March: PEISEY VALLANDRY, France March 10th to 17th • All-inclusive Club Med • Includes: Air Canada flights, transfers, all meals and snacks, non-premium drinks, 6-day lift pass, 5 days group guiding/instruction and evening entertainment. • Ski in/ski-out! 425km of pistes (70% above 2,000m) and the 2,100m vertical of the massive twin ski resorts of Les Arcs and La Plagne. $4,631 dbl. Check “Group Travel” at CanadianSkiVacations.com or 250-702-3898…