Skiers can explore Whistler Blackcomb for decades and still make new freeride discoveries.Eric Berger
There comes a point for many advanced skiers when they want to experience freeriding. Loosely speaking, this means heading away from the official groomed runs and onto other areas of the mountain.
Usually, it’s powder they’re after – and skiing it at full speed, an eruption of light, virgin snow pluming in their wake.
But there’s also the rush of shredding rugged and untamed terrain. A deep connection with the mountain is essential, in order to dart between its ridges or take air off them; once skiers have felt that joy, it usually becomes a serious relationship.
With freestyle and ski-racing, everybody is doing the exact same course, whereas freeride is open terrain and you’re finding your own expression on it.
— Derek Foose, freeride coach and guide
Good thing then, that skiers and snowboarders in western Canada can affirm their commitment at dozens of big mountain resorts, providing virtually limitless freeride thrills.
Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, near Golden B.C., is considered one of the world’s top-rated freeride venues. The only North American stop on the Freeride World Tour, the resort features 14 square kilometres of controlled but mostly wonderfully ungroomed terrain. Verticals reach nearly a kilometre; one run, called “It’s A Ten,” is a full 10-kilometres long.
"It’s choose your own adventure,” at Kicking Horse, says Michael Rubenstein, general manager of Kicking Horse Mountain Resort.Antoine Caron Cabana
Kicking Horse freeriders can plan their next pow run from the window seat at Eagle’s Eye Restaurant, Canada’s highest eatery.Mark Eleven Photography
“For freeriders,” says Mike Rubinstein, general manager of Kicking Horse, “once you reach the top and get a lay of land, [you just] choose your own adventure.
“You’ve got spines, glades, sneaky chutes, with five alpine bowls and five different peaks. The choices for freeride terrain are endless.”
Freeriders usually have no problem skinning or boot-packing for half an hour or so to find the perfect powder run, but to ski ungroomed terrain, “often, you won’t even need to hike from the lift,” Rubinstein says.
However, if you’ve taken Kicking Horse’s Stairway to Heaven chair, and the Whitewall staircase is open, he advises doing the climb because the vista of endless mountain peaks “is just phenomenal.”
Drop any direction, he adds, and you’ll be jumping every rock in sight before routing back to a lift run.
At big resorts like Kicking Horse, the optimal way to access the coolest freeride routes is to hire a guide. That’s certainly the case at Whistler Blackcomb, which is twice the size of Kicking Horse and North America’s largest resort.
With 33 square kilometres of terrain, “you can ski Whistler for decades and still make new discoveries,” states online magazine Sno.
Find a guide who knows the area inside-out, advises Derek Foose, a freeride coach and guide whose knowledge of Whistler Blackcomb’s off-piste slopes is possibly unmatched. “You can get deeper behind the curtain of where the mountains hide their secrets. You’ll ski rewarding routes that you wouldn’t find on your own.”
More than 20 years ago, when Foose founded Whistler Freeride Club, he taught ski-racing at the mountain. “After a few years in the racing scene, many 15-, 16-year-olds, wanted to quit skiing altogether,” Foose says. “I felt there needed to be a way keep them stoked.
Flying through ungroomed powder at Whistler Blackcomb is Eric Berger.Ming T. Poon
A Whistler Freeride Club member takes a feature in the Peak Express zone on Whistler Mountain.Christie Fitzpatrick
“It was the beginning of the competitive freeride movement and a lot of my friends were [winning],” says Foose. “Whistler was cautiously optimistic” about allowing the then 24-year-old instructor to lead his charges to the kind of steep, gnarly terrain that traditional ski classes wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole.
“The first year it was me and six kids, and it’s just been steady growth since,” he says. This year, the $3,285-weekend, season-long program has 120 members and 20 coaches.
Freeriding is an artform and that’s its seduction, says Foose. “At its roots, freeriding is expressing yourself on a given piece of terrain.” You scan your slope, plan your approach to its obstacles and, if you’re a hotdogger, throw in some tricks.
“It’s individual,” he says. “With freestyle and ski-racing, everybody is doing the exact same course, whereas freeride is open terrain and you’re finding your own expression on it.
“It’s almost entirely about just having fun playing in the mountains,” Foose adds. “And obviously, finding your own limits on any given terrain. But that’s also the best part of it: Everybody is looking out for each other” – keeping each other safe, he says.
Canadian freeride champion Olivia McNeill spent six years as a member of Whistler Freeride Club.
A few days before taking first place at this year’s Freeride World Tour, in Spain (and a week before taking third spot at Kicking Horse – qualifying her for finals in Europe), McNeill, 21, recalls, as a young teen, switching from racing to freeride.
“It’s super creative,” says McNeill. Whereas racing is “very repetitive, freeriding is a lot of fun, a lot of joy,”
“You don’t have to jump off big cliffs,” she says. “Just interacting with all the natural features on the mountain and everything it has to offer can be so appealing.
A brief bootpack leads to big rewards at Kicking Horse Resort.Chelsea Mackenzie Photography
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Fernie Alpine Ski Resort, B.C.
Notorious for snow: 11 metres falls every year. Hefty cliff drops and short turns mix with long stretches of open snow to fly across.
Revelstoke Mountain Resort, B.C.
Home to North America’s longest vertical (1.7 kilometres), Revelstoke’s wild runs are best accessed with a guide to ensure skiers have the correct skill set to track them and not get lost.
Lake Louise Ski Resort, Alta.
Often deemed “Most Scenic Resort,” it is also mighty fierce with many Double Diamonds – extremely difficult, steep and unprepared runs. It’s a paradise for freeriders.