After an alarmingly foggy drive from Seattle we arrived at our first stop on our Canadian road trip, Rossland B.C. Just across the US/Canada border it's a small town of around 14,000 people and home to Red Mountain.
Red Mountain is large (3850) in acreage and about the size of Palisades (SQAWK Valley for the OGs) in Tahoe. Even with its hefty footprint it felt delightfully local and homegrown, partially due to the lack of crowds but also the old slow fixed grip lifts (like comically slow).
It was foggy at lower elevations but once we punched through the inversion layer visibility was superb. Red allows skiing 360 degrees off each of its peaks, and we ripped laps of the low elevation tree runs off of Grey Chair. We would have done the same for Granite peak but unfortunately could not. Motherload chair the sole feeder to Granite peak was broken for our ENTIRE TIME we visited so we had to hike or take a snowcat to reach this terrain. This didn't kill our excitement though and we hiked plenty after our initial snowcat ride. We still got to taste some of the goods but our ability to lap this area was severely hampered.
Inside of the Red Mountain snowcat
Red is developing a great deal near the mountain and there are tons of slopeside sleeping options. Our accommodations were one of these slope side condos and it was top notch a prime location and a perfect spot for us to have fun with a mini-photoshoot.
The riders having some fun pre-ski
On our last day it was snowing heavily and we got some superb turns through the trees especially in the glades off of the Paradise chair. We finished the day happy and filled with stoke.
Even with slow lifts and a non-operational peak chair we still give Red Mountain a thumbs up and are hungry to go back when its fully operational.
We waved Rossland goodbye and headed up further north to the resort with highest vertical gain in North America, Revelstoke.
