Kicking Horse By The Numbers

Looking for More Snow, Skier Andy Dappen Heads North Where the Runs Are Long and Oh So Steep.

- Andy Dappen

A low-snow winter two years back had me frustrated.

Thanks to snowmaking, the home skiing at Mission Ridge had been tolerable but, frankly, most of the skiing around Washington was poor.

North of the border in British Columbia, however, the precipitation we had received in Washington as rain had come as snow falling softly on cedars. In many places the Canadian snowpack was normal so the real problem was how to decide.

Did we want the mountain with the best powder (Red, Whitewater, Revelstoke), best Nordic and Alpine combo (Silver Star), sunniest weather (Apex, Sun Mountain, Panorama), most demanding terrain (Kicking Horse, Fernie, and Revelstoke), or prettiest women?

In the end I chose Kicking Horse, above the town of Golden, because of its numbers.

It had twice the vertical and 2.5 times the acreage of Mission. On a normal year it’s got twice the snow of Mission — this particular year it had four times the snow. It also had five times as much steep terrain.

Finally, it had been 10 years since I had last skied it. I called my friend and local skier, Matt Dahlgreen, and we decided to pay a visit.

Following are my notes from our visit…

Matt’s a better skier than me but he’s also more anxious. Today he’s obviously fighting mental demons as we ride the gondola from the base of Kicking Horse to the top station, a ride spanning the resort’s 4,100 vertical feet.

This mountain is shaped something like a closed fist with the palm down. The knuckles are the peaks, the dimples between knuckles are the bowls, and the fingers of the fist are the east-west ridge systems separating the bowls.

Drop off the fingers in one direction and you ski north-facing slopes into the bowl below; drop off the opposite side of the finger and you ski south-facing glades into a different bowl.