ChrisC
Well-known member
Thought this was a worthwhile article about the joys of skiing in British Columbia, specifically Panorama, which gets overlooked even when it's having a good snow year.
It also mirrors some of my thoughts on our current metro skiing in Colorado, Utah, and California. (For example, I might never return to Solitude due to expensive parking, unlimited Ikon Pass usage/crowds, access road traffic, and costly lift tickets compared to its inception-to-2010s/ski shop deals.)
Stuart Winchester
Aug 04, 2025
Colorado is over. Utah is over. Tahoe is over. America racks 60 million skier visits per winter and nearly half of them are in these three places and probably 90 percent of these are at 20 ski areas. I don’t need to name them because you know them because everyone knows them. Even your aunt Joan who chain smokes Virginia Slims and still records her soap operas on VHS and hasn’t left Kentucky since 1973 and names her plants and has never skied and won’t because she’s “afraid of breakin’ somethin’” though apparently her lungs are crafted from adamantium knows what Vail is.
American skiing’s not over but mostly it is. Oregon and Washington? Forget it. Too many people, not enough ski areas, nowhere to stay on the hill anyway. We have to consider the environment you know and buildings even thoughtfully and densely constructed would be a catastrophe unlike the floating traffic jam known as US 2 when 5,000 Epic Pass holders migrate up to Stevens Pass every Saturday morning.
There is one low-crowd, big-mountain American ski alternative but you wouldn’t like it. Montana and Idaho are stuffed with 2,000-acre ski areas so empty you can ski onto the lift all day even when the pow’s stacked up to your roofrack. But they’re far from everyone and everything and the chairlifts are old and slow and none of them are on your Ultimate Powder Monster Ski Passport so you’ll have to pay $45 cash for a lift ticket and we just can’t be throwing money around like that and who at this point can even remember their ATM pin code?
But if you want the hack here’s the hack: Canada. Up North yonder. I know it sounds crazy but they still build things up there. An outrage! Here in U.S. America we fight housing like we’re invading Iwo Jima and push the timeline on what should be a simple village development out to decades and make sure it can house one-third as many people as initially proposed which was already 90 percent less than what we needed and celebrate our ability to get nothing done like we’d just invented the lightbulb. But in British Columbia the government decided 30 or so years ago to clear bureaucratic obstacles so that small ski areas could become large ski areas with high-speed lifts and large trail footprints and lodging tucked against the mountain and what do you know: the province has sprouted nine ski areas nearly the size of Keystone and just as nice. But not just as crowded. Because with the exception of Whistler which is also over no one skis in British Columbia.
So for Presidents Week 2025, my family went there.
It also mirrors some of my thoughts on our current metro skiing in Colorado, Utah, and California. (For example, I might never return to Solitude due to expensive parking, unlimited Ikon Pass usage/crowds, access road traffic, and costly lift tickets compared to its inception-to-2010s/ski shop deals.)
Panorama Is Skiing’s #LifeHack
Actually so is all of B.C. outside of Whistler
Stuart Winchester
Aug 04, 2025
Colorado is over. Utah is over. Tahoe is over. America racks 60 million skier visits per winter and nearly half of them are in these three places and probably 90 percent of these are at 20 ski areas. I don’t need to name them because you know them because everyone knows them. Even your aunt Joan who chain smokes Virginia Slims and still records her soap operas on VHS and hasn’t left Kentucky since 1973 and names her plants and has never skied and won’t because she’s “afraid of breakin’ somethin’” though apparently her lungs are crafted from adamantium knows what Vail is.
American skiing’s not over but mostly it is. Oregon and Washington? Forget it. Too many people, not enough ski areas, nowhere to stay on the hill anyway. We have to consider the environment you know and buildings even thoughtfully and densely constructed would be a catastrophe unlike the floating traffic jam known as US 2 when 5,000 Epic Pass holders migrate up to Stevens Pass every Saturday morning.
There is one low-crowd, big-mountain American ski alternative but you wouldn’t like it. Montana and Idaho are stuffed with 2,000-acre ski areas so empty you can ski onto the lift all day even when the pow’s stacked up to your roofrack. But they’re far from everyone and everything and the chairlifts are old and slow and none of them are on your Ultimate Powder Monster Ski Passport so you’ll have to pay $45 cash for a lift ticket and we just can’t be throwing money around like that and who at this point can even remember their ATM pin code?
But if you want the hack here’s the hack: Canada. Up North yonder. I know it sounds crazy but they still build things up there. An outrage! Here in U.S. America we fight housing like we’re invading Iwo Jima and push the timeline on what should be a simple village development out to decades and make sure it can house one-third as many people as initially proposed which was already 90 percent less than what we needed and celebrate our ability to get nothing done like we’d just invented the lightbulb. But in British Columbia the government decided 30 or so years ago to clear bureaucratic obstacles so that small ski areas could become large ski areas with high-speed lifts and large trail footprints and lodging tucked against the mountain and what do you know: the province has sprouted nine ski areas nearly the size of Keystone and just as nice. But not just as crowded. Because with the exception of Whistler which is also over no one skis in British Columbia.
So for Presidents Week 2025, my family went there.
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