Kicking Horse is situated beside the BC town of Golden, just West of the Canadian Rockies in the Purcell mountain range. Its about 3 and a half hours from Calgary, and about an hour further along Highway #1 than Lake Louise. Its a small resort in terms of lifts - with one gondola and three chairs - but in terms of terrain, and in particular steep and interesting terrain, it has to be one of the best in Canada.
As the resort says in their piste map - "3 Alpine bowls, 70 inbound chutes". If the resort can manage to improve the lift system to cope with the fact that it can get reasonably busy at weekends then Kicking Horse will definitely rival any other resorts in this region.
The skiing at Kicking Horse is essentially split into 3 main bowls by two big ridges - CPR Ridge and Redemption Ridge. The gondola follows CPR Ridge while the Stairway to Heaven chair takes you up Redemption Ridge. Both Ridges have great trees and gullies dropping off either side of them providing an amazing amount of cool terrain from so few lifts. The other two chairs - Pioneer and Catamount are in the lower half of the mountain and many skiers might not even use them. We skied here for three full days and just used the gondola and Stairway to Heaven chair the whole time. The resort has plenty in the way of restaurants and cafes at the base, plus the Eagle Eye Restaurant up the top of the gondola with fantastic views and affordable good food.
For those who don't like the sound of steep gullies, there is plenty of nice skiing to be had at Kicking Horse too, though for those who like long groomers and exploring the resort may seem fairly small fairly quickly. Kicking Horse's strength is definitely in its steep & challenging terrain. Without going anywhere near the ski boundary you can find as many gullies, cliff drops, ridges, and trees as you like. If you land here on a powder day, you're gonna have an epic time!!
For the more adventurous skier with Av gear (shovel, probe, & tranceiver) and the know-how to use them and make good decisions, there is a huge amount of easily accessible terrain from Kicking Horse - from the gullies on Terminator Peak (Glory, Truth, Dare, and Consequence) which are actually still in-bounds; to the out-bounds Rudy's Bowl which lies out to the skiers left of Redemption Ridge and requires skins to access, there is a huge amount of exploring to be done here!
We'd love to come back to Kicking Horse and see some new lifts and some better glading in the trees. If they could sort out some chest deep pow for us as well, then we'll drop everything and rock on over!
Click here for more info about Kicking Horse, Golden, and the backcountry skiing.
