One of the prices you pay for using FF miles is that you often have extra stop or an inconvenient schedule. In this case the flight was scheduled to arrive at 9:35PM, not ideal when you have a 3 hour drive to the ski resort you plan to ski the next day. So naturally the flight was delayed, we landed at 11PM, we were not on the road until 12:30 and got to bed in Pincher Creek at 3AM. At least Westjet delivered all our luggage, which they did not a year ago.
So we were not on the mountain at Castle until nearly 11AM. This is the first time I’ve skied Castle in low tide conditions, and we got a thorough briefing from marketing manager Cole Fawcett. Castle only had 106 inches snowfall through Jan. 31, making the lower third of the mountain extremely thin. The only snowmaking is on North Run and a couple of the groomers on Huckleberry. Cole said they would like to extend snowmaking to some of the lower runs near the Sundance chair.
Fortunately Castle got 31 inches of snow during the first half of February. We took a warmup on Huckleberry’s Pony Express run, which illustrated lower mountain conditions. The exit trail from the lift had a manmade subsurface. Pony Express does not have snowmaking and its upper section was smooth groomed packed powder. The lower part was I guess a rough groom with some hard chunks, likely due to not being able to groom intensively with a thin base.
Cole also warned us that my favorite run Drifter had a rocky exit gully so you had to exit via Easy Out, which had lots of icy moguls. These were visible from the top of Huckleberry.
We moved on to the Sundance and the upper mountain Tamarack chair. To no surprise on a holiday weekend Tamarack had about a 10 minute line for our first lap. But that eased off by at least half with lunch hour and only filled its maze once more about 2:20PM.
The good news is that upper mountain skiing was excellent. The groomers Bandito and High Noon had soft packed powder despite the SE exposure.
Note the spotless blue skies; no Great Gray North today! High temps were about 30F, possibly the warmest I’ve skied Castle.
View up the lift with Tamarack run in the gully with sun shadow line looker’s left:
Wind usually blows some snow in there, so that was our second run up top.
Sheriff was the most popular ungroomed run from the Tamarack chair.
We soon found out why.
After a Sheriff encore we headed north for a top to bottom run. View back to the lift from the north:
The northern boundary runs are not recommended as they are very steep at the bottom where the snow is thin. So you want to ski something where you can hit a groomer halfway down. Upper Cascade scattered trees are more abundant than usual but still comfortably spaced.
Lower Cascade was groomed and in great shape. We could tell immediately when we hit the manmade snow on North Run.
Castle’s south chutes had all been closed until a week ago.
Now they are open as far as High Rustler. In my past experience the first one Lone Star has often had the best snow. But today I heeded local advice and headed out to High Rustler, profile view from the top:
All of the skiers were on the far side of that tree lined ridge, so I went that way too. View down:
It may be narrower than usual but the windsift was deep and I skied it nonstop.
When I stopped to take a picture back up, I was fortunate to see a posse of locals ready to rip.
Here the second skier looks like a ghost behind the first skier’s mist.
Being narrower than normal was no obstacle to enthusiastic skiing.
As the pitch eased off near where I stopped, some people put out extra long spray.
I took one more top to bottom lap on Outlaw and North Run, finishing with 17,600 vertical.
Even in a subpar year Castle delivers. This was my 12th season skiing here since 1999.
So we were not on the mountain at Castle until nearly 11AM. This is the first time I’ve skied Castle in low tide conditions, and we got a thorough briefing from marketing manager Cole Fawcett. Castle only had 106 inches snowfall through Jan. 31, making the lower third of the mountain extremely thin. The only snowmaking is on North Run and a couple of the groomers on Huckleberry. Cole said they would like to extend snowmaking to some of the lower runs near the Sundance chair.
Fortunately Castle got 31 inches of snow during the first half of February. We took a warmup on Huckleberry’s Pony Express run, which illustrated lower mountain conditions. The exit trail from the lift had a manmade subsurface. Pony Express does not have snowmaking and its upper section was smooth groomed packed powder. The lower part was I guess a rough groom with some hard chunks, likely due to not being able to groom intensively with a thin base.
Cole also warned us that my favorite run Drifter had a rocky exit gully so you had to exit via Easy Out, which had lots of icy moguls. These were visible from the top of Huckleberry.
We moved on to the Sundance and the upper mountain Tamarack chair. To no surprise on a holiday weekend Tamarack had about a 10 minute line for our first lap. But that eased off by at least half with lunch hour and only filled its maze once more about 2:20PM.
The good news is that upper mountain skiing was excellent. The groomers Bandito and High Noon had soft packed powder despite the SE exposure.
Note the spotless blue skies; no Great Gray North today! High temps were about 30F, possibly the warmest I’ve skied Castle.
View up the lift with Tamarack run in the gully with sun shadow line looker’s left:
Wind usually blows some snow in there, so that was our second run up top.
Sheriff was the most popular ungroomed run from the Tamarack chair.
We soon found out why.
After a Sheriff encore we headed north for a top to bottom run. View back to the lift from the north:
The northern boundary runs are not recommended as they are very steep at the bottom where the snow is thin. So you want to ski something where you can hit a groomer halfway down. Upper Cascade scattered trees are more abundant than usual but still comfortably spaced.
Lower Cascade was groomed and in great shape. We could tell immediately when we hit the manmade snow on North Run.
Castle’s south chutes had all been closed until a week ago.
Now they are open as far as High Rustler. In my past experience the first one Lone Star has often had the best snow. But today I heeded local advice and headed out to High Rustler, profile view from the top:
All of the skiers were on the far side of that tree lined ridge, so I went that way too. View down:
It may be narrower than usual but the windsift was deep and I skied it nonstop.
When I stopped to take a picture back up, I was fortunate to see a posse of locals ready to rip.
Here the second skier looks like a ghost behind the first skier’s mist.
Being narrower than normal was no obstacle to enthusiastic skiing.
As the pitch eased off near where I stopped, some people put out extra long spray.
I took one more top to bottom lap on Outlaw and North Run, finishing with 17,600 vertical.
Even in a subpar year Castle delivers. This was my 12th season skiing here since 1999.
Last edited:
