| The story of alpine resorts within day-tripping distance from Calgary has been one marked by a decade of unprecedented growth.
Gone are the days of the classic ski village, characterized by a romantic image of snow falling on evergreens below a daring, tucked-away slope. Nowadays, the quintessential resort experience has become so neatly packaged for comfort and convenience that people tend to forget they are in a mountain environment. High-speed lifts whisk you to the summit in a comfortable bubble protected from the elements, while tissue paper awaits runny noses at the bottom of runs. If you do not agree with the difficulty rating on the last run, a customer service manager will field your complaint in the state-of-the-art day lodge. Within resort boundaries, few decisions remain for individuals other than choosing a trail and deciding on whether to have a latte or cappuccino après ski.
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
This growth has served to polarize various interest groups on such divisive issues as development, pollution, budget cuts, tourism and ecological decline.
Dave Poulton, executive director of the Calgary-Banff chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, says that the organization’s main concern is the expansion ambitions of resorts within the national parks.
"Essentially we feel that they should be able to operate within their current footprint," he says. "Any expansion plans would be incompatible with their location in the national parks."
Poulton adds that all four of the resorts operating in the national parks – Sunshine Village, Lake Louise and Mt. Norquay in Banff, and Marmot Basin in Jasper – have yet to provide long-range plans to the federal government. The plans are supposed to specifically outline each ski area’s intentions over the next 15 years, which gives Parks Canada the time to call for full environmental assessments of any proposed developments.
"That sort of flagrant defiance of national parks policy very much concerns us," Poulton says.
The ski area policy – completed in 2000 under the watch of former federal heritage minister Sheila Copps – outlines rules regarding what ski resorts can and cannot do within the national parks. The expensive and complex long-range plans are a policy requirement, and while the ski areas aren’t under any legal obligation to rush out and do one, they must be completed before any expansion of facilities will be allowed.
And until they do, each hill must abide by interim rules devised by Parks Canada. These rules permit only a limited amount of development, such as addressing safety or health concerns.
Poulton notes that without any long-range plans, there is a lack of comprehensive environmental assessments being done at the resorts, which would examine things like habitat disturbance, water usage, wastewater disposal and the habituation of grizzly bears at Lake Louise during the summer months.
What do Albertans really think about more development in our national parks? According to an August 2000 Angus Reid survey, 65 per cent feel that national parks are more about protecting wilderness than tourism and recreation.
ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY
The limitations within the national parks have been the bane of the ski resorts that lease the land from the feds, leaving some pro-development business people in the province foaming at the mouth over the $1 billion spent in Alberta’s national parks each year.
Crosbie Cotton, the director of the National Parks Ski Area Association, says he disagrees with Park Canada’s policies because the regulations don’t allow the resorts the opportunity to thrive in the marketplace.
"They don’t make sense and we’ll try to get them changed over time," Cotton pledges. "All we want to do is use the land we have under lease – we don’t want to expand outside of what we already have. But restrictions make that impossible."
Cotton adds that while there is tremendous development of resorts around the world, including in B.C., ski areas in the national parks remain static, and this is ultimately threatening their bottom line.
"Panorama didn’t exist just a few years back. Kicking Horse didn’t exist. Sun Peaks now has more beds than the whole community of Jasper. They aren’t restricted at all – BC is wide open for business."
He says the combination of heavy-handed government topped with adverse market conditions is "creating challenging times for resort operators." Another threat is the massive growth and popularity of sun-belt destinations.
"With the ease of the Internet, people can now make a last-minute choice of whether they want to go to the beach or go skiing," Cotton says.
In an effort to strengthen destination business into the Banff/Lake Louise region, three ski resorts – Lake Louise, Sunshine Village and Norquay – joined to create what’s called the Banff Ski Hub.
Essentially, it’s a one-stop shop where visitors can purchase all components of their Banff/Lake Louise winter vacation – tri-area and resort lift tickets, snow school lessons, ski rentals and outdoor gear.
Yet, overall tourism to the ski resorts has been down about 25 per cent over the last five years. The local "rubber-tire" market, as Cotton calls the people who make day trips from Calgary and other locations, accounts for upwards of 85 per cent of the total visits to the ski resorts. But it’s the people who come to visit for longer that really bring home the bacon.
"The destination market is really important to the local economy," Cotton notes. "Those are the people that stay at hotels, those are the people that eat in restaurants and go to bars."
He says a large drop in American visitors has been compensated for by growth from Britain and Eastern Canada, as well as growth in the Calgary market due to economic good times.
"Alberta has a dynamic economy and Calgary in particular is a city where people have jobs, so they think about skiing in Banff for a weekend."
"We want Ottawa to back off its program that is putting the ski hills out of business because it sounds good to the radical environmental movement," Crosbie says. "We’re already leaders in environmental protection because the resorts are in the park."
LAKE LOUISE GETS GREEN GUNS
In fact, Lake Louise Mountain Resort recently won the Heritage Tourism award for environmental excellence. The resort retired some old snow guns this season in favour of more environmentally friendly snowmaking equipment.
Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, the Calgary-based company who owns the resort, says the new guns are able to churn out the white stuff more efficiently than their predecessors.
"They use less energy and less water, but actually have a greater snow output," says RCR media relations co-ordinator Paula Worthington. "With us being in Banff National Park, we’re excited to be using environmentally responsible equipment."
Matt Mosteller, senior director of business development, says Louise is in excellent shape this early in the season.
"We have over 80 to 100 centimetres in the alpine, and snow all the way down to the base area, which is fantastic for this time of the year," he said.
"The snowmaking crew is going at warp speed and our grooming guys are running around the clock to manage the snow," Mosteller adds.
The season has had an exceptional start. Sunshine and Lake Louise Mountain Resort opened earlier this month to some of their best early season conditions in 15 years. Skiers and snowboarders also began shredding Canada Olympic Park after the hill fired up its lifts – including the $3.5-million high-speed quad installed last season – under new management. COP has upgraded its Superpipe to Olympic standards after crews spent the month of October moving 10,000 cubic metres of dirt to solidify the profile of the pipe.
FORTRESS BACK IN SNOW BIZ
Fortress, the little resort buried deep in Alberta’s Kananaskis Country, was resurrected from the dead by the Banff Rail Company after spending a year hibernating with wasted powder. Zrinko Amerl, the resort’s new owner, has been instrumental in bringing Fortress back, and says he will breathe new life into the financially neglected mountain.
"Over the years, people have seen Fortress go from a very successful place with no money being invested into it, to being very unsuccessful with still no money being invested in it," Amerl says, noting that the lack of long-term vision led to the resort’s demise.
"We are committed to sinking $10-million into the place over the next 10 years."
In comparison to the budgets of nearby Lake Louise or Sunshine, that sort of cash flow might seem small, but considering that there has been almost zero thrown into Fortress since 1975, it’s a significant pile of dough. Amerl says that when all is said and done, Fortress will roughly double in size to somewhere between 1,700 to 1,900 acres from 930 acres.
"Fortress is the little mountain that could – but never did," he says. "It has always been the poor little sibling of other resorts in Alberta – the runt in the family. None of the previous owners wanted to feed the little runt to let it become a beautiful husky dog."
The Banff Rail Co. isn’t wasting any time in shaking things up at the hill. Plans to open Whiskey bowl are in the works, as is a facelift for the legendary Fortress lodge.
Perhaps the most interesting upgrade is already underway. The old Farside chair is being ripped out and moved to a new line for the 2006-07 season. Rather than closing that area for this season, Fortress will be running cats with 40-person sleighs to service three different drop points. Moving about 200 people an hour, the cats will dump off riders at the Saddle (old top of lift), Baldy and the Upchutes.
Amerl says they have surveyed Baldy as a potential spot to install the new lift. Mt. Baldy has 1,250 vertical feet for lift space, which is 150 feet higher than the old lift. He also says the plan is to open another 800 feet at the bottom of Baldy, bringing the total run to about 2,000 vertical feet.
Fortress is also returning to the scene with plans to build a massive 64-acre terrain park, a welcome change from past attempts. Fortress is collaborating with the University of Calgary snowboard club to design the park, which will include a range of features and piped-in music.
Another slick selling feature to attract people back to the hill is the dirt-cheap cost of passes. Early season passes were $250 for an adult and $200 for a student. Single-day lift tickets are $40 for adults and $30 for students, waxing nostalgically to the golden days of ticket prices.
KICKING HORSE
A way station of a town off the Trans-Canada Highway, Golden, B.C. used to be a great place to top off with gas and grab a hot cup of joe for the long haul over Kicking Horse Pass. Actually, it still is.
But lately, the 4,000-odd predominantly blue-collar locals have had some company in Golden – odd folk in colourful clothing, toting elaborate equipment and grinning like jackpot winners. The skiers and snowboarders have arrived.
Lured by stealthy powder stashes a few kilometres down the road at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, the town of Golden has become a magnet for people so devoted to riding that it’s vogue to sport goggles at the pub après ski. After a massive terrain expansion that boasts the second-largest vertical drop in Canada, and in the midst of a development boom, it’s become Western Canada’s newest born-again ski resort.
An inspiring mountain setting, reasonable prices and powder aplenty make the resort worth a visit, but it’s the terrain that puts the kick in Kicking Horse – three sprawling peaks hold cornices that’ll send you back to ski school. The resort has $25 million in mountain enhancement projects now underway in the continued development of the mountain village.
CASTLE MOUNTAIN
Across the flat, cattle-country prairie from Calgary lies a Southwest Alberta gem that is legendary for its fall lines, champagne powder and lack of liftlines. In 1999-2000, its busiest season ever, Castle logged a mere 62,000 skier visits, fewer than the big-three in Banff on a holiday weekend.
Known for its gnarly off-piste terrain and an upper mountain that’s more black than blue, Castle intends to develop 150 hectares on Haig Ridge that will better meet the needs of beginner and intermediate skiers who may have felt intimidated by the mountain in the past.
Castle Mountain representative Brian Cusack says the expansion will include six or seven runs, a new triple chair and 10 four-plex units at the base.
"Eighty percent of the skier market is intermediate and we currently don’t have very much intermediate terrain on our mountain," Cusack notes. "Opening up Haig will effectively quadruple our intermediate terrain."
This cult stash in the Crowsnest region has the best of both worlds: a mom-and-pop atmosphere at the bottom, with well-priced lift tickets and even cheaper pitchers of beer, and a big, bad 1,613-acre mountain above. Sure there are only five lifts, none of which is a high-speed quad, but more than half of the 2,800 vertical feet is above tree line. |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.