Snowstorm greeted us when we arrived in Calgary on Saturday evening. Without any local knowledge, we were glad that a Banff Airport cab pulled out of the airport exit directly in front of us, so we simply followed it in good faith. And as we all know, trust is rewarded, we left the city limits with less than 10 meters of visibility and took Highway 1 west. Just before the Rocky Mountains, the snowstorm fortunately cleared, so we reached the Kicking Horse River Lodge in the small town of Golden shortly before midnight, our accommodation for the next two days.
The Kicking Horse ski resort is located directly above Golden. After a truly fantastic breakfast of French toast with fresh strawberries and bananas, we loaded our skis into the car and set off. Kicking Horse has a particularly good reputation among hardened freeriders for its steep slopes. I had received the tip to come here a few weeks earlier from my Swedish freeride buddy of many years, Karolina Ekmann. When she came here for the first time, she liked it so much that she made Kicking Horse her "home mountain" this season.
The ski area itself consists of just two lifts apart from the beginners' hill: a long gondola and a quad chair. But anyone who thinks "that can't be anything clever" is mistaken. It is unbelievable how efficiently the two lifts have been built on the mountain, opening up a truly vast terrain. The Golden Eagle Express, a modern figure-eight gondola, leads from 1100 meters to the 2448m high CPR Ridge without stopping. Two hundred meters further west, parallel to the CPR Ridge, is the Redemption Ridge, to which the Staiway of Heaven Express leads. From both ridges, you can head west and east over steep flanks into wide bowls. Wonderful!
On our first day in Kicking Horese, we explored the area on our own. As two people had died in an avalanche just outside the ski area the day before, we decided to only ski the open slopes. But even the open slopes alone offered an incredible variety of off-piste terrain. After a handful of tree runs on the eastern slopes, the clouds closed in. But a few meters off the slopes we still found first-class pillow lines for a full afternoon.
On day two, Karolina showed us what Kicking Horse really has to offer. The western slopes of CPR and Redemption Ridge in particular drop steeply into numerous couloirs in Crystal and Feuz Bowl. "Closed areas", Karolina explained to us, should definitely be observed here. "This is different from Europe. The Canadians leave everything open that is still rideable. Closed areas can quickly become deadly".
As we had no intention of going anywhere on our own, we were happy to let Karolina show us the little secret spots. After six or seven runs of 1300 vertical meters, our legs were starting to get tired. Reason enough to round off the day with a good Canadian glacier beer at the Peak Grill, the chilled après-ski meeting place.
Now we're heading over Roger's Pass to Revelstoke. News from there in two days! And if anyone else is traveling to Kicking Horse, the Kicking Horse River Lodge is highly recommended!
Text by Martin Hesse
