Adventure

Backcountry Bound

By David Godsall

In Revelstoke, B.C., skiing has evolved beyond the lift.

You stand in a line, get on a chair, get off at the top, ski to the bottom and do it again. That’s skiing, or at least that’s skiing for most people most of the time. Which is a shame. Because at its best, skiing is about adventure and exploration. And while lifts are often what make skiing possible, they’re rarely what make it great. On top of the lineups, there’s a fundamental flaw: Lifts have to stay in one place. Want to ski somewhere new? Better build a new lift because the old one isn’t going anywhere.

There are lots of ways to ditch the lift and head off for whiter, fluffier pastures, but these can be intimidating. To challenge the myth that backcountry skiing is the exclusive preserve of a small hard-core minority, more resorts and tour operators are making untouched backcountry powder available to more skiers and riders in more ways than ever before. The trick to overcoming off-piste apprehension is taking small steps, and Revelstoke Mountain Resort, in B.C.’s Selkirk Mountains, is the ideal place for an incremental approach. As the only resort offering lift skiing, cat-skiing and heli-skiing from one base, RMR is the destination for anyone looking to cast off the shackles of the lift. Here’s our three-step guide to backcountry bliss:

Step 1: Give lifts the boot

You already own the most important piece of backcountry equipment you need to get started: your boots. If you want to expand your horizons beyond the groomers, the first step is literally a step. You’ve got to hoof it. At 5,620 feet, RMR has the most vertical drop of any ski resort in North America. Here you’ll find hundreds of acres of the kind of in-bounds terrain that snow sports manager Dan Sculnick calls “slackcountry.” Spend 30 minutes hiking from the top of the lift into the far reaches of the North Bowl, and your reward will be the snow lazier skiers miss – not to mention valuable experience on un-manicured slopes. Book a powder skiing lesson and tell your instructor that you’re willing to work for your turns. You’ll be on to step two in no time.

Step 2: Hitch a ride on a snowcat

A day of cat-skiing at RMR begins a lot like any other day, only earlier. First you head up the gondola at 7:30 a.m. for breakfast at the lodge. Next meet your ACMG/IFMGA certified guides; then continue up the Stoke Chair for backcountry safety orientation and avalanche beacon training. The 12-seat heated snowcat – kind of like a school bus on caterpillar tracks – waits at the top to deliver you into the 2,210 acres of wide-open bowls and rolling subalpine glades the resort reserves for cat use. Any fit intermediate skier can go cat-skiing and gain confidence ripping through the backcountry with less expense and commitment than heli-skiing demands. The terrain is a lot like the resort’s, only you and your 11 new friends are the only ones skiing it. Good-bye moguls, hello waist-deep white stuff!

Step 3: Get ready for liftoff

Heli-skiing is the pinnacle of the backcountry experience, and with four established heli-operations taking off from Revelstoke, this humble resource town is North America’s heli-skiing mecca. Canadian Mountain Holidays, the world’s largest heli-skiing company (and one of the first), has been flying skiers into the B.C. backcountry since 1965. A day with CMH in one of its 11-passenger Bell 212 helicopters offers breathtaking views from places impossible to access by any other means and more vertical of pristine powder than you could ski in a week at a resort. In addition to the ride up, you get decades of safety experience and patient coaching when things get deep and steep. And once you’ve stepped out of the helicopter onto a windswept Selkirk peak, with nothing but wintry B.C. wilderness as far as the eye can see, you’ll have been officially inducted into the hard-core minority. Congrats.

(David Godsall is a writer and editor with Spafax Canada in Montreal and an alpine Darwinist.)