The drive from Lake Louise to Revelstoke was the only stretch of the Trans Canada highway I was worried about: Rogers Pass midway between Banff and Revelstoke is a gnarly stretch of the mountain highway that passes through some serious avalanche terrain and gets closed in winter for multiple days at a time. If a storm had come through we’d have been stuck trying to get west for what could have been days… As it was, the snow that hit us in Lake Louise subsided by the time we drove west and we were treated to an absolutely beautiful – but sometimes harrowing, given all the trucks – drive through eastern BC. Glacier National Park of Canada was a sight to behold, as was Mount Revelstoke National Park as we came close to our destination. Rogers Pass itself was like no other stretch of road I’d seen: special tunnels dug into the sides of the mountains to allow avalanches to flow over the road without taking the traffic with them!
Revelstoke Mountain Resort is pretty new as ski resorts come: it was celebrating its 11th birthday when we were there. Boasting the most vertical drop of all ski resorts in North America, the three lifts access an amazing amount of terrain. Chutes, alpine bowls, hike-to glades, insanely long groomers and some great tree skiing, the place has it all. 1713 meters/5620 vertical feet from top to bottom. The vertical drop makes for totally different climates at the base versus the peak, when we were there it was -3C/27F at the base of the gondola and -14C/6F by the time we got to the resort’s peak. Cold. Revelstoke hadn’t received fresh snow in a little while when we visited, so fast and very long groomers were the runs of choice. And they were groomers like I’ve never skied before, so steep that we couldn’t see the base of the runs from the top. Lisa and I put down 30,000 vertical feet of skiing on our first day, and we only skied until 2:30PM. I think Revelstoke would without question be one of the best resorts in the world if you hit it on a powder day…
We absolutely loved the quaint little town of Revelstoke, a few miles west of the ski resort. A tightly-packed couple of main cross streets with a handful of bars, restaurants, ski stores and home base for a number of BC heli operations. We dined at Chubby Funsters the first night, an eclectic restaurant and bar full of locals with great beers and equally good food. Night two was at The Village Idiot, another fun spot where – in true Revelstoke fashion – the bartenders shook our hands and introduced themselves when we sat down for a few beers. Such a great vibe to the town, Revelstoke’s remoteness and no-holds-barred style of skiing seems to have kept it somewhat isolated from the tourism traffic typical of ski resort towns. Oh, and we also fell in love with The Modern Bakeshop and Cafe, enjoying breakfast there for both our mornings in town as well as lunch on our way out. We both agreed that Revelstoke is somewhere we’ll have to hit again, maybe when the kids are a little bigger and stronger and can handle 30,000+ vertical feet each day! Crazy to think Lisa’s Uncle Al was heli skiing in Revelstoke back in the 80s before the ski resort existed. Mountain man to the core.
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