REVELSTOKE: North America’s New Big One
Photos: Joe Erfle
Rising up from the snaky black Columbia River, Mount Mackenzie and its 8,000-foot summit is no longer just a backcountry hotspot. On December 22, 2007, Revelstoke Mountain Resort officially opened creating significant buzz in a region that usually remains under the radar in regards to mega-resorts.
President Paul Skelton, the former General Manager at Whistler/Blackcomb, and the RMR crew installed a gondola from what was the base of the one-chair ski area known as Powder Springs. Once you reach the top of the gondola, it’s a short slide down to a high-speed quad that takes you within bootpack distance of Mackenzie’s summit.
With a sustained (no flat spots) vertical of 4,735 feet and an open boundary policy, RMR offers some of the most terrain of any ski resort in North America. And once they fulfill next year’s plan of installing a chair closer to the Mackenzie summit, RMR will own the most vertical on the continent for a ski area.
After a homey breakfast at Shelley’s Main Street Café in Revelstoke, a town of about 1,500 people with snowbanks dwarfing parked cars, we drove the 6km to the mountain. As we began our switchback drive up to the temporary parking lot, we passed construction of the resort village at the bottom of the mountain. What is now the main lodge at the base of the gondola will be the mid-mountain lodge next year as the gondola will receive an extension down to the main village. Without question, RMR is a work in progress, but the energetic Skelton of Aussie descent has big resort plans, including a year-round village and installing more chairs to make it easier to access such massive, challenging terrain. Additionally, RMR purchased Selkirk Tangiers heli-skiing and CAT Powder Skiing making it even a more formidable force in regards to ski options.
We elected to ski around the North Bowl on wind-buffed snow on top of an impressive base. Like nearly every other ski terrain in the Kootenay’s, pillows and funky terrain were found everywhere. The terrain is enormous with bowls lined with chutes, cliffs, and wide-open bowl skiing. And the hiking and touring options from either boundary are limitless. With this much big, steep terrain and management ambition, Revelstoke is officially on the radar.