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  5 of 5, "Steep" 29/12/2011 @ 04:22 |
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| Price Paid |
| Lived at base |
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| Times Visited |
| 15 Times + |
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| Review Detail |
Kicking horse is one of th best mountains I've spent time in. There is something for almost everybody for a couple of days and for an expert for years.
The superbowl is now open on the west side of Terminator ridge, giving a backcountry feel inbounds. There are no lifts up this bowl, and you traverse a long way to get to it, but it's worth it.
Feuz bowl and Rudi's are musts if you like steep entries, and if you have the cash, a day with Purcell Heli is too.
All in all great tree skiing with challenging options. |
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| Strengths |
Steep
Empty
Good snow
Backcountry feel |
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| Hot Spots |
Cork's
Copper horse lodge for accommodation
Whitetooth grill
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| Weaknesses |
| Size |
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| Similar Resorts Visited |
Stuben
St Anton ( for the steeps)
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| 5 of 5, "Season In Kicking Horse." 25/08/2010 @ 23:18 |
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| Price Paid |
| £6000 |
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| Booked Trip Through |
| Powder Trip - (Evil people!) |
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| Times Visited |
| 2-5 Times |
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| Review Detail |
I booked onto an instructors training course for the season 08/09 having only had 3 weeks on snow and being a bit of a wimp. Fortunately I didnt know that the reputation of Kicking Horse was that it was quite a scary mountain or I may not have gone.
I am so pleased I did end up in Kicking Horse. Despite several trip members having to pay extra to stay out there, as the people organising it were evil and refused to pay the accommodation and resort the money they were owed (I avoided that misfortune thank god). So had the best 3 months of my life out there!
Having learnt to snowboard on Kicking Horse means I can now tackle anything thrown at me (Apart from jumps.. they still scare me..) But the first day up the gondola we had 'Truth', 'Dare' and 'Consequence' pointed out to us as you can see them just before you reach the top of the gondola ride. They looked to me as sheer vertical drops. But sure enough, by the end of my stay there I had been down them a few times as well as 'Whitewall', which is another must for anyone who wants a challenge. They are the steepest parts of the mountain.
There are also some brilliant tree runs (which I hated until stopped crashing into trees and falling over at every turn.) where you get some great deep powder. Another great spot for powder is off the various chutes that line the ridges.
There are also some lovely easier runs too from the Catamount chair, as well as a beginner slope. So it really does suit any ability.
One of the best things about kicking horse is that it is empty. Having read some of the other reviews on here that are many years old I am guessing it is slightly busier than it was then as there is accommodation on the hill now as well as bars and restaurants. But still it is easy to be the only group of people on a run.
I returned the following year for a 10 day trip as I missed the place so much. I just need to finish uni so I can move to Canada so I can visit it as much as I like! Kicking Horse is the best resort I have ever been to. It is small, but so much fun. I wasnt bored of it after 3 months there snowboarding 5 or 6 days a week. That has to say something right?
GO THERE! |
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| Strengths |
Very empty
A great challenge
Great powder
Loads of trees to get lost in. |
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| Hot Spots |
Truth and Dare - You have to hike to get to them!
Peaks bar on the mountain - For a drink and a yummy plate of nachos :) |
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| Weaknesses |
Lift pass is very expensive!
Only one way up to the top - Although they are bringing in a new chair lift to change this! |
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 4 of 5 04/04/2005 @ 13:52 |
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| Price Paid |
| Various Resorts |
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| Booked Trip Through |
| Ski All America |
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| Times Visited |
| Just Once |
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| Review Detail |
As we come around the corner in to the town of Golden we got a bit worried. Golden is not the prettiest town in Canada .... by a long stretch! But as they say don't judge a book by its cover! We discovered The Kicking Horse Grill, which is in an authentic Log Cabin. The restaurant has won various awards for their food etc etc, good night out highly recommended!
Kicking Horse resort is situated 15 Km from Golden and you have to cross the Kicking Horse river on your way up there! They are busy building some condos at the base of the slope, which are also for sale, but when we were there there was nowhere to stay on the mountain and not much to do there at the moment, but I'm sure that will all change as they are also expanding the resort by a few thousand hectares! There are a few small restaurants at the base, a cafe and a sushi bar, of all things!
The Golden Eagle Express takes you to the top quite quickly, at the top of the mountain is the Eagle Eye Restaurant, which lays claim to being the higest Restaurant in the Rockies?
From the top there is a long green run "Prefect 10" which zig Zags all the way down th mountain and is 10 Km's long!
The snow at the top of the mountain is very very niiiiice Just what you'd expect in the Rockies! Lovely dry powder! Unfortunatley it didn't snow while we were there!
The resort is only five years old and so does not have any snow making capabilities yet! This year (Feb 2005) was not a good winter in Canada, this caused the lower slopes especially the last 100 odd meters to the lifts, to be quite icey and we saw a few people leaving on stretchers because of nasty wipe outs!
From the Catamount quad chair are quite a few greens and blues! Loads of blacks from the top of the mountain which is where the good snow is!
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| Strengths |
The Golden Eagle Express Gondola
Dry powdery snow!
Not crowded slopes |
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| Hot Spots |
Kicking Horse Grill in Golden
Eagle Eye Restaurant
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| Weaknesses |
All the lifts start at the bottom of the mountain so you have to show your lift pass every time!!
Icey slopes, no snow making!
Even though the resort is only 5 years old the chair lifts seem alot older! |
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| Similar Resorts Visited |
| Verbier, Val dIsere, Meribel, Les Diblarets, Villars, Leycin, Hopfgarten, LakeLouise, Big White, Fernie, Whistler, Winter Park, Copper Mountain, Tignes....... |
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| Reviews: 37 |
| Review Mod |
| Kirkcudbrightshire |
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| 4 of 5 17/04/2004 @ 20:20 |
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| Price Paid |
| Road Trip |
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| Booked Trip Through |
| Self |
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| Times Visited |
| Just Once |
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| Review Detail |
How i visualised this place in my mind ended up being nothing like i imagined. I thought all the hype and good things i had heard about Kicking Horse may well leave me expecting too much and therefore disapointed.
Well how wrong could i be....this place rocks and i will return here again thats for sure.
Kicking Horse is only a 10 min or so drive from the town of Golden and was formerly known as Whitetooth. On way up to the hill you cross the railroad and we were unlucky enough to be held up for 25 mins to let a slow moving freight train pass which gave us time to read all the graffiti spray painted on the railway sidings. Not the prettiest place ive visited but i was excited at the thought of spending a day at this new resort.
We had left Lake Louise early after breakfast and drove for just over an hour to Golden. The journey took a bit longer than expected because of extensive upgrading of the main road.
Kicking Horse base area was a bit of a building site with work on the new Glacier Lodge residence well under way.
Parked across the road and walked over to day lodge where we bought our day tickets and went for a hot chocolate to wait until the lifts opened up at 9am.
Had a read at the trail map and digested some facts about this place.
There are 4 lifts,the main one being the single stage Golden Eagle Express gondola right to the top. There are then a further 3 chairlifts. The one to the right on the lower slopes - Pioneer was not in use during our visit.
Kicking Horse has 1260m of vertical.
A top elevation of 2450m.
2750 acres of rideable terrain and an annual snowfall of about 300 inches...quite impressive stats.
Once the gondola started up we were near the front of the line to get to the top. There had been 10 - 15 cm of fresh overnight and it was a bright sunny morning so things looked good.
When we got to the top i was quite impressed at the amount of terrain on offer as the upper slopes are not visible from the base area.
We traversed along a bit then dropped steeply into Crystal bowl. The snow underfoot was fresh,light and untracked. This was heaven as we glided gently across the powder as the slope flattened out and we headed for the Stairway to Heaven quad chair. Here we had about 6 people in front of us waiting on the chair opening up. Once at the highest point of this resort at Blue Heaven we tracked over to the right and dropped down into the wide,steep Feuz Bowl....this was amazing and is new terrain to the resort as it was previously used by Purcell Heli Skiing and was not open to lift served customers.
By mid morning the area was still very quiet. We headed back down to the bottom and had a drink at the daylodge before being whisked back to the Eagles Eye restaurant at the top. This time we traversed along a narrow ridge with a steep drop in to Bowl Over. The snow here was perfect and we picked our own lines till it flattened out as the treeline approached. We then hit the cruisers back down to the Catamount quad chair from which we had a couple of runs through the trees before going back to the top for a last blast coming of CPR ridge and back to base.
At the daylodge we had a cheap lunch,bought my Kicking Horse stickers at the small shop, visited the good,clean washrooms and headed back to the car well satisfied with a brilliant days riding on our first but what will certainly not be our last visit here.
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| Strengths |
Great lift accessed terrain.
Good snow record and powder when we visited.
Still not too busy or commercialised.
Good steep bowls of powder.
Plenty of good terrain to hike to. |
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| Weaknesses |
| I was just not there long enough ! |
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| Similar Resorts Visited |
| Around 140 in Europe and N.America. |
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