Skiing and Snowboarding Kicking Horse, BC
The first thing to say about Kicking Horse is that despite the sprinkling of gravity defying kids zipping around the slopes, this is not a beginner’s slope! Now it is not that I am a beginner. I have been skiing for years but have never really challenged myself until I visited Kicking Horse. It is a huge mountain with so many hidden secrets and off-piste adventures that you just don’t want to come down. The powder they have received there has been outstanding in recent days thus cementing their reputation as the best champagne powder ski hill in Canada. This is one of the most challenging and fun ski hills you could possibly tackle in the Canadian Rockies or technically the Dogtooth range of the Purcell Mountains.
Kicking Horse is located about 2.5 hours west of Calgary and over 3 million people travel past the town of Golden each year. It is surrounded on all sides by Banff, Glacier, Kootenay, Yoho, Mt. Revelstoke and Jasper National Parks and encompasses 2,750 acres of ski and snowboard terrain. In Layman’s terms, it is bloody huge. Sitting at the bottom and looking up, it is hard to believe that this could be a natural ski hill. It has the look that it was designed with beautifully placed trees and jumps dotted about the place.
The downside to the hill…excuse the pun… is that when it gets busy on good snow weekends, the queues can be pretty slow. I waited for 45 minutes to get onto my first gondola. This is a real killer when you are so excited about getting onto the primed slopes. I am not sure I have ever fallen or crashed into so many trees in my life as I did when skiing Kicking Horse. Though my body now feels broken, my mind is dying to leave Banff next weekend and tackle the beast again! A trip to the Canadian Rockies and Banff in winter would not be complete without a ski or snowboard on Kicking Horse.
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1.866.SKI.KICK [754.5425]