Revelstoke Myth - more locals than: Vail, Aspen, Park City - Lots of Liftlines

[ChrisC]

One of the biggest myths going on in ski-dom is this concept of Revelstoke. I'm totally not so excited to go there this year.

Myth: Remote, powder nirvana, massive vertical, great snow, cheap town, no lift lines

Tried to buy an investment property there. No luck for 2 years.

Reality: Local population larger than ANY US ski town at 8k (Vail, Aspen, Breckenridge, Telluride, Park City), lots of interior BC cities within driving distance, big lift lines on powder days, very few lifts, bad gondola access, not great glades, bad exposure). It's Whistler in the interior BC. Go to Red Mt. or Whitewater.....possibly Fernie/Castle.

Revelstoke needs to get with it. Lack of infrastructure since its debut in 2008/09. You do not want ski with 1000's on the Stoker Chair all day.

It's time to execute their plan and make it viable: Primarily a 2nd way from base to top of Stoker Chair.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Weekend powder days were already a cluster in 2012.
Revelstoke is not a bad ski area but it is surely overrated for the reasons ChrisC enumerates. The chair in North Bowl is badly needed also. It's really a chore to ski the longest fall lines in there now with long tedious runouts to the Ripper Chair followed by mostly catwalks to get back to Stoke.

 

[Tony Crocker]

not great glades

This is a puzzle as the cat/heli areas in the immediate neighborhood of the Selkirks and Monashees have arguably the world's finest tree skiing. I'll speculate that easily accessible Mt. MacKenzie was extensively logged in 19th/early 20th century. New growth forest tends to be much tighter than old growth.

.possibly Fernie/Castle.

Definitely the finest interior western Canada lift served destination IMHO.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Revelstoke is not a bad ski area but it is surely overrated for the reasons ChrisC enumerates.

I may have cross-posted this thread from NY Ski Forum before, where you see that Revelstoke has a following on the East Coast, which I don't get as it's a ton of travel in both directions through Calgary as a gateway: more than seven hours of flights + five hours of driving.

I guess that the best option is to plan a week-long road trip with stops along the way at LL/SSV and Kicking Horse. The point has been made previously that it's easier from the northeast to fly to the Alps than to interior BC destinations.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I guess that the best option is to plan a week-long road trip with stops along the way at LL/SSV and Kicking Horse.

+1 Yes , I'm strongly in favor of giving a day or two to each of these places rather than committing a while week to one of them. And if you're limited to one week and going to LL/SSV for part of it, I would still choose Fernie/Castle for the other part over KH/Revy despite the gaudy vertical stats of the latter areas. Panorama is also worth a day breaking up the driving if you have the time.

 

[Tony Crocker]

it's easier from the northeast to fly to the Alps than to interior BC destinations.

Thankfully from West Coast metro areas there are abundant direct flights to Calgary and Vancouver. The other option Kelowna requires a plane change in Seattle or Vancouver. But that has the advantage of Alaska's Burbank-Seattle flight so I don't need to go to LAX. It seems surprising that there are not many direct flights from major eastern metro areas to Calgary and Vancouver.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

The other option Kelowna requires a plane change in Seattle or Vancouver.

I suspect that flying into Kelowna is prohibitively expensive given how seldomly we hear about people doing that to ski interior BC?

It seems surprising that there are not many direct flights from major eastern metro areas to Calgary and Vancouver.

As airlines recover from the pandemic, there are lots of nonstops from the NYC region to Seattle; however, none to Vancouver, which is hard to believe. The only nonstop to Calgary is on Westjet from JFK, but it lands in there at 9 pm, which means that you have to go straight from the airport to a hotel.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I suspect that flying into Kelowna is prohibitively expensive given how seldomly we hear about people doing that to ski interior BC?

I don't recall price being that bad when I've done it. Within Canada, Kelowna is a fairly significant year round destination. My gateways for interior B.C. ski trips: Calgary 9, Spokane 4, Kelowna 4, drive from home 2, Vancouver 1, Kamloops 1, Whitefish 1.

The only nonstop to Calgary is on Westjet from JFK, but it lands in there at 9 pm

That is a crappy schedule. I like to arrive midday as there's a minimum 2 hour drive and often more to be positioned for the next day's skiing.

 

[jimk]

I agree with the gist of the post by @ChrisC , even though I'm guilty of spreading some of the myth. See this report:
https://www.skitalk.com/threads/unofficial-guide-revelstoke-mountain-resort-bc.9562/#post-397595

I have only skied Revy for two consecutive days in mid-March 2018.

The good: the slopes and base village were empty during my visit, conditions were excellent on the Stoke and Ripper chairs and we skied in 6-8" new snow on the second day. The motel we stayed at in town also seemed about half empty in mid-March. I thought the tree skiing was very good, but I only made a couple passes through "the big woody". The easily accessed trees adjacent to the Stoke and Rippers seemed to have some nice spacing.
The bad: lower 3000' of vertical was not user-friendly due to a recent rain-freeze event and that gave the mountain a more limited feeling terrain-wise compared to other large ski areas I visited on the same trip (e.g., LL and SV). I think we only skied the long groomers to the base maybe twice in two days, and downloaded on the gondi the rest of the time.

I really couldn't complain about our two days there, excellent snow and no people. It's just that Revy skied like a nice 2500' vert western mtn, not a 4000-5000' vert western mtn. Not my first recommendation for someone flying from the east coast to spend a week at. And if I had experienced the crowds that ChrisC talks about it might have surely decreased my fun factor a bit. I kind of got the impression from my visit that the place was underutilized, not the case according to ChrisC.

The idea of myth-busters for any and all other ski areas might make an interesting thread topic. Not just disappointments, but also places that were better than expected. Hmmm...

 

[jamesdeluxe]

The idea of myth-busters for any and all other ski areas might make an interesting thread topic. Not just disappointments, but also places that were better than expected.

Go for it. I may have a few to add.

 

[snowave]

Interesting, as just about a month ago I was looking into Revelstoke for a trip, and the more I got into it, the more it looked like a nightmare, especially being a boarder. I was also interested to see the larger population, but the town infrastructure looked more like for a couple thousand.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

I was looking into Revelstoke for a trip, and the more I got into it, the more it looked like a nightmare, especially being a boarder.

Would be interesting to hear which other mountains are a nightmare for boarders. Everyone brings up Alta, with its traverses to key terrain sectors.

 

[tseeb]

I have to question from the OP "Local population larger than ANY US ski town at 8k (Vail, Aspen, Breckenridge, Telluride, Park City), lots of interior BC cities within driving distance".

I think Telluride is the only place in the list as isolated as Revelstoke. While towns of Aspen, Breckenridge and Vail are smaller than Revelstoke, they are not the largest town within 90 miles as is Revelstoke, which is 92 miles to Golden or Vernon and farther to Kamloops or Kelowna. Eagle County (which does also have Beaver Creek) is 55K and not only do you have Summit County 31K next door, but Denver with a metropolitan area of over 3M is (without traffic/weather) only an hour and a half to Breck, 105 miles/2 hr 15 min to Vail and under 200 miles and about three and a half hours to Aspen (which not only has population down valley to Glenwood, is 2 hrs 15 min to Grand Junction). And Park City which is below 7K is much closer to SLC than any of the CO ski areas to Denver.

I agree that layout of Revy causes lines getting out of the base on busier and powder days. And if Stoke has problems, as it did my last day there https://www.firsttracksonline.com/boards/threads/revelstoke-bc-2-21-2020.14181/#post-82491 skiing becomes limited. I think crowd is split between locals, BC/AB skiers and bucket list skiers from everywhere. I have wonder when they will be able to pay for and whether they can support all the planned lifts.

 

[Tony Crocker]

In terms of crowding in western North American ski regions, I believe I-70 Colorado is in an unenviable class by itself.

But Calgary is the Denver of Canada, a significant metro area (1.3 million) with a high proportion of people who ski. And they seem more willing to drive farther than the Denver people, as they are the plurality customers for areas as distant as Fernie, Kimberley, Panorama and Revelstoke. Unlike those other places, Revelstoke is also within daytrip distance of the Okanagan/Kamloops (450K people).

One can speculate on reasons why areas might or might not be crowded, but over time the proof is in observation. Because of proximity to Mustang, I've skied Revelstoke in 8 different seasons. I wrote a more enthusiastic feature article than jimk after my first visit in 2009. The area was in its second season so not widely known, and I also had great snow conditions top to bottom. Since then I've experienced days where surfaces below Stoke/Ripper weren't the greatest plus the two powder day crowd clusters in 2012 and 2013.

The overall crowd issues are surely concentrated upon weekends and powder days, so it's unclear whether overall visitation is high enough to finance needed new lifts. Revelstoke is still flawed for widespread appeal, which is why some consultants recommended against its development originally per DanoT. It's still marginal for beginners and low intermediates. And for the broad general intermediate destination market Big White and Sun Peaks are and always will be far superior.

For my tastes North Bowl is the prime terrain but doesn't have a lift to run laps in there, the same situation as Telluride's premier Palmyra terrain. So for enjoying expert alpine terrain, Revelstoke is not even in the conversation with Lake Louise, Kicking Horse or Castle IMHO.

Interior western Canada in general has lower skier density than most of the well known US resorts. However they also have less lift capacity, so several of them are vulnerable to to weekend/powder day lift lines, exacerbated in the case of choke point lift designs like Revelstoke and Kicking Horse. In terms of true crowd avoidance/lack of liftlines, I'd say Apex, Red Mt. and Castle (midweek) are the best. If you get powder ON a weekend at Castle, the upper red chair can stack up.

I'm inclined to agree with tseeb that the 8K people who live in Revelstoke are not the issue there. It's the powder chasers from Calgary and Okanagan/Kamloops. As for Red Mt. and Whitewater locals, Nelson/Castlegar/Rossland/Trail have a combined population of only 35K. You would think those places would attract Spokane people, but they have closer options and even before COVID it seems most people don't want to cross the border.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

But Calgary is the Denver of Canada, a significant metro area (1.3 million) with a high proportion of people who ski. And they seem more willing to drive farther than the Denver people, as they are the plurality customers for areas as distant as Fernie, Kimberley, Panorama and Revelstoke.

They really must want to go to Revelstoke if they can stomach the five-hour drive right past highly rated LL, SSV, and KH. I suppose that Denver/Aspen is a similar situation; however, that's only a 3.5-hour drive if you can avoid weekend traffic.

 

[Tony Crocker]

They really must want to go to Revelstoke if they can stomach the five-hour drive right past highly rated LL, SSV, and KH.

It doesn't make sense to me either, but that's what I was told by one of Revy's marketing directors a few years back.