Yes there is a ski area there, not just the hot spring. Stuart chose to ski there one of the days on his first (?) trip to interior B.C. Lonnie visited lots of extremely obscure areas like this on his western road trips in 2012-2023. So what was I doing there?
1) I stayed overnight in the immediate area.
2) It's on Indy Pass, so free.
3) I deliberately did not want to expend much effort the day before 3 days of cat skiing at Island Lake.
4) I had to be out of the hotel 11AM but Island Lake check in 2+ hours drive was at 5PM.
Expectations were low. The area sits between 4,000 and 5,000 feet on the opposite side of the valley from Panorama, so snowfall has to be very modest. Weather was overcast but temps in the 20s F. I was there from 12:30 - 2:00PM. A paper trial map was posted at the ticket window.
Has anyone else ever seen a sign saying "Powder skis required on blacks?"
View riding the chair:
Even though the customers are overwhelmingly families teaching young kids, Fairmont is not a bunny hill. It has mainstream intermediate pitch with some variations that would be marked single black on many mountains. Liftblog backs up this impression as the length to vertical ratio of that chair is just under 4 to 1.
View down from the top:
View across lower mountain to base lodge:
There is some Canadian Rockies scenery surrounding the ski area.
I skied 6 runs totaling 5,550 vertical. Would that have been above average for the recent Project 101 US tour? The brochure quote rounds up the claimed vertical to 1,000. Liftblog says that chair is 875 vertical.
I saw a few snowmaking guns. Nonetheless the partially hardpacked surface did not have the telltale slick subsurface. A local mother and daughter initiated conversation in the parking lot when they saw my California license plate. She said the snowmaking guns are portable, capacity is not that high, and that the chair had opened only a week ago with more snow from the prior week than Panorama got. So there's the explanation for surprisingly pleasant snow surfaces.
If I had been paying, a senior lift ticket would have been $42US.
1) I stayed overnight in the immediate area.
2) It's on Indy Pass, so free.
3) I deliberately did not want to expend much effort the day before 3 days of cat skiing at Island Lake.
4) I had to be out of the hotel 11AM but Island Lake check in 2+ hours drive was at 5PM.
Expectations were low. The area sits between 4,000 and 5,000 feet on the opposite side of the valley from Panorama, so snowfall has to be very modest. Weather was overcast but temps in the 20s F. I was there from 12:30 - 2:00PM. A paper trial map was posted at the ticket window.
Has anyone else ever seen a sign saying "Powder skis required on blacks?"
View riding the chair:
Even though the customers are overwhelmingly families teaching young kids, Fairmont is not a bunny hill. It has mainstream intermediate pitch with some variations that would be marked single black on many mountains. Liftblog backs up this impression as the length to vertical ratio of that chair is just under 4 to 1.
View down from the top:
View across lower mountain to base lodge:
There is some Canadian Rockies scenery surrounding the ski area.
I skied 6 runs totaling 5,550 vertical. Would that have been above average for the recent Project 101 US tour? The brochure quote rounds up the claimed vertical to 1,000. Liftblog says that chair is 875 vertical.
I saw a few snowmaking guns. Nonetheless the partially hardpacked surface did not have the telltale slick subsurface. A local mother and daughter initiated conversation in the parking lot when they saw my California license plate. She said the snowmaking guns are portable, capacity is not that high, and that the chair had opened only a week ago with more snow from the prior week than Panorama got. So there's the explanation for surprisingly pleasant snow surfaces.
If I had been paying, a senior lift ticket would have been $42US.
