The ‘reveal’ is magnificent. And it happens in the flash of an eye. One minute I’m deep in the Monashees, negotiating a twisting, turning highway whose steep surrounding slopes offer little chance for natural light to penetrate. The next I’m in bright sunshine and staring across the Columbia Valley at a massive swath of forested mountainside be-ribboned with newly-cut runs emanating from a dazzling cone of ice and snow. It’s a Kodak moment, for sure. A ‘stop the car and feast-your-eyes’ minute for weary travellers. And it’s one that a lot of people around here are hoping will resonate with globe-trotting Snoweaters. Welcome to Revelstoke Mountain Resort…
The ski business lives on hype. Biggest this. Baddest that. Largest. Longest. Greatest. Fastest. Highest. Toughest. Best ever. You know the drill. After a while, the propaganda gets tedious, and the poisonous tendrils of cynicism start to invade your critical faculties. That’s why it’s so much fun when a place actually lives up to its reputation.
I admit it. I love my mountains extra-large. I mean, nothing appeals to me more than big, gnarly mountains that challenge and push me and force me to re-evaluate my own skills.
And Bones knows that. “You should come and see this place for yourself,” the president of Revelstoke Mountain Resort teased me after one of our frequent phone conversations on the state of the current ski business. “I think you might like what we’re doing here.”
How could I refuse such an invitation?
The former mountain manager at Whistler/Blackcomb, Paul ‘Bones’ Skelton is an irascible Aussie rugby player-cum-skier who just happens to be one of the most passionate people I know when it comes to big mountains, big-mountain communities and big-mountain resort design. And right now he’s living his dream. “I’ve taken so many left turns in my life, sometimes I just have to shake my head in wonder,” says the man who first donned skis as a lark when he was 22 years old. “Still,” he says, “you don’t get this kind of an opportunity by just sitting back and letting life pass you by…”
What he won’t dwell on, however, is the blood, sweat and tears that he shed getting this newest of resorts off the ground and running. For the last five years, this project has been his baby. Commuting from his home base of Pemberton in his well-travelled Cessna 206, Bones assembled an operations team, collaborated on the mountain design with Chris Cushing of the world famous SE Group (formerly Snow Engineering), and even managed to land the project’s biggest and most enthusiastic investor, Don Simpson. It was a performance of Herculean proportions.
So when the fully refurbished resort finally opened its door for business on Dec. 22, 2007 — after nearly 20 years of speculation and broken promises, $80 million in investments and the future of a historic mountain community at stake — one could understand Bones getting a little emotional. But that wasn’t the case he says. "There was so much going on that day that when the ribbon was cut it really didn't affect me. I was just too busy. It was only when I first boarded the gondola with Michelle that we sat and looked at each other and that's when it really hit me, it all came flooding back.”
But enough of Bones. He made me promise that this story wouldn’t be about him. So I’ll try to keep him in the background as much as I can. It won’t be easy.
Did I mention that his spouse, Michelle, is also working at the mountain? A vivacious, outgoing mother of two teenagers —with an effervescent smile and a killer ski style (she grew up skiing at Whistler) — Michelle seems the ideal foil for Bones’ straight-ahead, take-no-prisoners approach to life. As promotion coordinator for RMR, one of her jobs is to babysit the VIPs and media types who are all clamouring to visit the resort this winter. And you couldn’t find a better person for that task.
“It just never stops,” she says. “I can barely keep up with the demand. But it’s very satisfying because it feels like we’re doing things right. The one thing we keep hearing here is the word ‘fun’. We get that all the time. ‘It’s fun to ski here’; ‘It’s a fun mountain’; ‘What a fun time we had.’ And that’s exactly what we want to hear.”
But I’m getting carried away with the Skeltons’ story again. And I promised…
So where was I? Oh yeah – driving east on Highway 1 and getting my first glimpse of RMR. What a sight! The place looked HUGE. And it looked like the snow gods had been particularly kind to its slopes this year. Even from here, the trees looked plastered with the white stuff. As for the snow cone on top, it was a triple scoop. I couldn’t fight its attraction. Although it was already well past one o’clock in the afternoon, I decided to damn the torpedoes and see if I could get a few runs in before the lifts closed.
Twenty minutes after leaving the Trans Canada Highway, I had my lift ticket — thanks Michelle — and I was walking into the brand-new, $15 million Leitner Poma gondola at the base of the mountain with my skis in hand and high expectations in my heart. Above me stretched 4,735 vertical feet of lift-served skiing and over 1,500 acres of legendary Selkirk Mountains terrain to play in. I couldn’t wait…
I’m open to challenges on this, but I would bet a bottle of wine that Revelstoke’s gondola services the longest, most consistently steep face in Canada. I mean, the lift covers nearly 3,000 vertical feet of terrain (there’s a four person detachable quad that takes you up the final few thousand feet) and it never benches out or gets flat for any length of time. As I would discover soon enough, a non-stop run down the gondola slope (coquettishly called Kill The Banker) is a bona fide leg burner. But what a rush!
That particular rush would come later however. First, I wanted to explore the resort’s legendary bowls that are accessed from its top lift station. By the time I skied off the chair, a corona of clouds hung lazily over the mountain’s summit. Timberline stretches exceptionally high here, and even at 7300 feet stands of gnomic, snow-pasted evergreens endure. Still, it didn’t look ideal for an exploratory run in the out of bounds zone beyond North Bowl. Visibility was near nil and there was no local around to follow.
What would Bones do, I asked myself. And I immediately knew the answer.
So that’s how I found myself tiptoeing under the North Bowl boundary rope and brailling my way across a nearly-untracked slope of knee-deep blower snow late on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-February in the heart of the Selkirk Mountains. I couldn’t believe my luck. Here I was, all alone, with a couple of grand of untouched snow below me. All that was left for me to do was to push off…
And when I did, I discovered why thousands of Snoweaters from around the world converge here every year for their annual heli-ski fix. The moment I started going downhill, that knee-deep fluff started to expand until I was waist-deep in the stuff. Face shot after face shot. And with virtually no effort. Over a rise, down a little gully, through a stand of hard-limbed spruce, and then down another furrow. The snow was now bubbling up around me like champagne that’s been poured too quickly. And I was drinking it in as fast as I could. Welcome to Revelstoke Mountain Resort…
I did a couple more laps in the same zone before the mountain closed for the day. I had only skied the top lift to that point, so I was curious about the bottom three thousand feet. It looked so steep and consistent – and the snow was so deep -- that I was convinced I could find a way down through the forest (rather than taking a more conventional route).
Mistake. While the upper mountain boasts natural glades and easy paths through the greenery, the lower mountain’s forest is as densely packed as après-ski partiers at the GLC. Trying to link up turns through this maze of spruce and hemlock and tight little cedars was near impossible. Unfortunately, by the time I figured this out, I was already committed. The rest of the run is best left unreported.
It was a sweaty and much-chastened survivor – did I already say I love a mountain that can whip my butt? – who showed up at the day lodge some time later for an après-grovel drink or two. And lo and behold, I thought for just a moment that I was back at Whistler.
For there, lounging on the sun-washed deck was a gaggle of Whistler celebrities including Eric Berger, Christian Begin, Chris Eby, Sarah Jane Hornes – and big bad Joe Lammers (now RMR’s assistant patrol chief). As we exchanged stories and swapped tall tales, I couldn’t help but notice how comfortable Joe was in his new home. So I asked him outright about his move east.
“I couldn’t be happier,” the popular redhead told me. “I made a commitment to this place four years ago, bought a property here, and threw myself into Revelstoke life. I love the place, I love the people and I love my mountain job.” But more importantly, he told me later, he can see a real future for himself in his new home. “I really get the sense that I can make a difference here. And that’s really empowering. For me, it’s been a 100 per cent positive move.”
Enough said. Welcome to Revelstoke Mountain Resort…
