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AJP

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Does anyone have any experience using any BC heli or cat operators in mid-late december and what typical expectations could be. i understand the daylight is significantly shorter, the odds of clear days are lower, but the price is significantly cheaper. Eagle pass is one operator in particular i have heard good things about. I have skied at CMH kootenay in january and crescent spur in february and both trips were great. I appreciate any insight into a december experience, cheers!
 

TonyC

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I find that price of cat/heli skiing is extremely well correlated with expected snow conditions. The lower altitude places start discounting earlier in March than the higher places that preserve powder better. Christmas is not high priced as in resort skiing but lower priced because it's early season.

What does early season mean? For cat skiing it means less terrain available, specifically a deep enough snowpack to build out all the cat roads. High alpine terrain used by many heli operators may need more time to fill in adequately for safe skiing. In my view it's penny wise and pound foolish to book far in advance for shoulder season cat/heli skiing. It's still not cheap and you're not going have a warm feeling about the $$ you saved if conditions are subpar.

Western Canada's snowfall is a bit more front ended than in much of the western US, so there's not question that quite a few Decembers are really good. And unlike the late season, you know that the snow once it is there will preserve in midwinter weak sun. So if you have the flexibility to get up there on a short notice once you know there's a good early snowpack, I think that is an attractive proposition. This is particularly true for those living within drive distance in Calgary, Vancouver, Seattle.
 

Philpug

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Paging @tam to the white courtesy phone.
 

surfacehoar

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Tony pretty much covered it. I've booked first cat of the year at K3 and RMR before the resort opened. As long as your expectations are aligned with reality, early season is a great time. Short days on grass covered slopes in deep powder with lots of bumps, brush and micro features.

22792379_10159394805520307_2718032311346194700_o.jpg


There are lots of grassy slopes and meadows in Eagle Passes tenure. This picture was from their Facebook page, taken recently. he's cutting a landing. Good thing this isn't the Cascades.

Reports of 50inch depths in the Selkirk's.


I think it makes sense for a day or 2, with less available terrain I wouldn't book for a week.
 
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skibob

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Tony pretty much covered it. I've booked first cat of the year at K3 and RMR before the resort opened. As long as your expectations are aligned with reality, early season is a great time. Short days on grass covered slopes in deep powder with lots of bumps, brush and micro features.

22792379_10159394805520307_2718032311346194700_o.jpg


There are lots of grassy slopes and meadows in Eagle Passes tenure. This picture was from their Facebook page, taken recently. he's cutting a landing. Good thing this isn't the Cascades.

Reports of 50inch depths in the Selkirk's.


I think it makes sense for a day or 2, with less available terrain I wouldn't book for a week.
Random Comment: Surfacehoar: a top ten screen name. Well done!
 
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AJP

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Thanks for the feedback, as of now the plan is to wait till december 1 to book any flights , coming from nyc will either fly to spokane or calgary. If snowpack is decent book flights for mid decemberish and try to post up in revelstoke and cherry pick a few days with eagle pass based on availability, or any other local providers with some last minute availability. Worst case we ski a couple resorts on the powder highway and save heli$ for another time. If anyone would be interested on hopping on a few days at eagle pass if the snow cooperates (heli only , not lodging and food) my buddy and i would only need 2 more people to fill an entire group of 4.
 

PTskier

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Cat has the advantage of getting to better spots and avoiding some bad spots if the coverage is iffy. Heli skiers must ski from the drop off zone to the pick up zone no matter what the conditions are like between them, maybe some great runs with tough parts in sections.

Western Canadian snow cover is rapidly increasing as the La Niña develops.
 

TonyC

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I would target that max snowfall area of the Monashees with the emphasis on tree skiing for early season. That would be (west to east) K3, Mustang, Eagle Pass.
Cat has the advantage of getting to better spots and avoiding some bad spots if the coverage is iffy.
Yes and no. I definitely know that a minimum snowpack for building out cat roads can be more than what is just needed for skiing. In a lean year at Island Lake we did a couple of 15 minute bootpacks to get to some good snow where the cat road couldn't been built yet. So the heli and cat both have constraints in early season.

I would definitely wait until at least early December to book anything. First weekend of December is when you can see how much terrain is open at lift served areas like Big White, Revelstoke and Whitewater. That will give you a concrete data point of how the snowpack is building in the region.
 

surfacehoar

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With a whisper it looks like RMR got rid of their snowcat and isn't operating cat skiing on Mt. Mackenzie anymore. They've partnered with Great Northern in Trout Lake to offer day-cat skiing based out of Revelstoke.

More like half day cat skiing. Since it's a couple hours drive and a ferry crossing just to get to the cat loading zone. They are setting the expectations at 11am first turns. For $589. - Not taking guest until Jan, so it's not an option early season anyways.

Great Northern was recently purchased by the owners of Fortress mountain. I like their tenure a lot.
 

TonyC

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RMR's cat skiing made little sense, virtually all south facing and poachable from the resort.

Great Northern was the second cat operation in B.C. formed in the late 1970's. I guess long time owner Brent must have retired/sold. They definitely did not offer day skiing when I was there in 2005.

Of all the cat/heli trips I've done, this one was unquestionably the worst, coming after 4 days of torrential rain.
http://www.firsttracksonline.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=606
I later found out that most operators rain-checked customers to the next season because conditions were so bad, but Great Northern was unfortunately not one of those.

Great Northern's Lodge is down at the road not up in the ski terrain. So even if staying there you have a long cat ride in the morning and a long ski down a south facing cat road at the end of the day. Once up there yes the terrain looks good. It tops out at 7,200 so very little above the tree line.
More like half day cat skiing. Since it's a couple hours drive and a ferry crossing just to get to the cat loading zone. They are setting the expectations at 11am first turns. For $589.
That sounds about right. I would expect well under 10K of skiing, not a good value for $589 IMHO. K3 has the best day skiing reputation in that vicinity though I have not been there myself.
 

DanoT

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Last March (mid month) I did 4 days with CMH Nakusp. It poured rain and fog right down to the valley bottoms the first 2 days so no flights, it then stopped raining and turned cold but high winds for the next 2 days ruled out skiing the upper landings. The mid elevation landings offered some only slightly wind affected turns followed by formerly rain soaked now 3" thick frozen breakable crust for the bottom half to third of the 1500' to 1000' vertical runs. I skied one day of this crud and then went home.

Any future Cat or Heli trips for me will be in Jan. or Feb, only.

The OP's plan of skiing some B.C. Powder Highway resorts if the Heli is sketchy is a flawed plan as most B.C. Interior resorts don't usually open until the end of the first week of December. Red Mountain lists Dec.9 2017 as the projected opening day, Revelstoke is projecting Dec. 2 opening. Whitewater waits for the big boulders and 6' willows to be covered.

Sun Peaks is projecting a Nov 18 opening which is likely a bit optimistic, however they usually open the week before or week of US Thanksgiving in late November. This early opening is due to SP having done a ton of summer grooming over the years, pulling stumps, picking rocks, cutting weeds, planting grass, and installing some snow making. SP also has a lot of low angle runs which hold snow and open earlier than steep runs.
 

surfacehoar

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RMR's cat skiing made little sense, virtually all south facing and poachable from the resort.

Great Northern was the second cat operation in B.C. formed in the late 1970's. I guess long time owner Brent must have retired/sold. They definitely did not offer day skiing when I was there in 2005.

Of all the cat/heli trips I've done, this one was unquestionably the worst, coming after 4 days of torrential rain.
http://www.firsttracksonline.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=606
I later found out that most operators rain-checked customers to the next season because conditions were so bad, but Great Northern was unfortunately not one of those.

Great Northern's Lodge is down at the road not up in the ski terrain. So even if staying there you have a long cat ride in the morning and a long ski down a south facing cat road at the end of the day. Once up there yes the terrain looks good. It tops out at 7,200 so very little above the tree line.

That sounds about right. I would expect well under 10K of skiing, not a good value for $589 IMHO. K3 has the best day skiing reputation in that vicinity though I have not been there myself.

This is the first time I've heard of day skiing at GN as well. Too bad your trip was so poor. I couldn't help but laugh at the pics of the rain soaked snow. Sorry.

The Tenure was listed with all assets on landquest.com for several years for what I thought was a reasonable 2.7M Canadian dollars. I think they would have to rebuild the lodge up higher to be competitive with the best cat skiing operations in today's market.

Trout lake normally gets tons of snow. From what I understand it's the snowiest "city" in Canada. Environmentally the Lardeau river out of trout lake is a special place. Strongly recommend floating the river in the fall to see the Grizzly bears and eagles enjoying the feast. The guides say the river hosts the worlds greatest concentration of inland grizzly bears.
 

TonyC

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There's no question that's a great area for snow. White Grizzly and Selkirk Wilderness are just down the road. Not quite as great as Mustang and Monashee though.:D
 

DanoT

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For just 1 or 2 days of Cat Skiing, I recommend K3. They share an operating boundary with Mustang Powder Cats, have no overnight lodge so you are just paying for skiing, and they will pick you up at your hotel in either Revelstoke or Sicamous.

With a no-lodge day skiing operation, you will lose some skiing time driving to their mustering point but I assume that in early season they would time things to arrive at the muster point at dawn.
 

TonyC

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Any future Cat or Heli trips for me will be in Jan. or Feb, only.
Mid-March/April needs to have access to the high alpine. None of the numerous operators around Nelson and north to Trout Lake including CMH Nakusp have very much of that. You want to see terrain going up to 9,000 feet, and 10,000 would be even better. I had an excellent heli day in late March 1999 with RK and two in late March 1998 with TLH. Chatter Creek is the only cat operator with alpine terrain at 9,000+. So with cat I would not push past early March. There are many other heli operators with high elevation alpine, Mike Wiegele, Last Frontier, Northern Escape, some of the CMH lodges like Cariboos and Bugaboos.
 

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