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Kicking Horse: Riding High

Ski feature published in Snow Magazine, Winter 2010/11

Canada new kid on the block already has a rich pedigree when it comes to advanced terrain and excellent snow. Robert Leslie headed to Kicking Horse to see if the young steed could really buck with the best.


“The Dutch Wallet has already been punched - so let’s scoot on round to the Red Light District.” A. Code. Language. It must be. After all, my friends and I aren’t in Amsterdam – we’re in Kicking Horse in the Canadian Rockies, high up on the spine of CPR Ridge and on the look out for powder, not prostitutes.

Soon we begin to decipher. Both “Dutch Wallet” and “Red Light District” are tricky 40-degree couloirs and “punched” simply means skied out. And because Chuckie, our guide, is trying to find us the best possible “unpunched” terrain, we follow the former pro snowboarder on towards the Red Lights.

“There’s a mandatory three-to-four foot air on exit.” Chuckie then chuckles, glides off the lip and is gone. We follow and are soon in the guts of one of the many shoots and gullies on which Kicking Horse is slowly heaping its reputation. Steep, technical, varied terrain, with small trees and snow-laden rock features – leading to wide out-runs. And Chuckie was right in this case – the Red Light District is indeed unpunched and the ‘air’ without doubt ‘mandatory’ – the landing cushioned by dry banks of blown snow, cradled by the couloir.

It was in 1858 that geologist Sir James Hector was kicked and almost killed by his own horse while looking for a suitable railway route through the Rockies – but it was not until 2000 that Kicking Horse Mountain Resort came to be. A young upstart compared to its closest neighbours Banff and Lake Louise, Kicking Horse still only has one principal lift, the Eagle Eye Express gondola, which can whisk you up over 1000m vertical in 12 minutes. All this means that if in extreme weather conditions it closes, apart from a couple of slow low-level chairs, it’s game over.

But when the game is on, this is perhaps the most advanced in-bounds terrain in North America - and one of the continent's best-kept secrets. Yes, there may only be one way up, but there’s a hundred ways down. From the top of the gondola, you’re already on the spine of CPR Ridge, rather disappointingly named after the Canada Pacific Railway - and not a life-saving drill that is better suited to this heart-stopping terrain. While one side of the ridge is steep, open fir glades, the other is a furrowed brow of narrow lines, reached by a long and rutted traverse. This approach is tricky enough, navigable only by the best snowboarders. For skiers, it's the kind of traverse that, if you spent an entire season here, one thigh would soon outgrow the other, leaving you with a rapper's limp to rival Snoop Dog.

After our next ride up the 'gondy' it's time to give both thighs a work-out - and a hike up to the 2,400 metre Terminator Peak, from which the full scale of the Columbia River can be seen as it beats its relentless path towards the Pacific. But before we get to the top, Chuckie is digging a snow hole - for Chuckie is no ordinary guide. He works for Kicking Horse's unique Big Mountain Company (BMC). Not quite ski school, not quite mountain safety camp and not quite guiding service. It's all of these - and even joins the dots in between.

So, crouched over a snow hole, we learn about snow layers and how to identify hoar frost on a wind lip. And on the way down 'Dare' - a tricky route off the back of Terminator Peak - we don't just ski pockets of powder, but are taught why they are there and how to find similar elsewhere. Not bad when you think it had been six weeks since Kicking Horse last had it hooves in any fresh snow. Even my 1980's jump turns are given the BMC treatment. It turns out I'm employing the same technique with the pontoon-like Rossignol S7 Barras under my feet as I did with my needle-straight 210 cm Rossis of yesteryear. Out goes the exaggerated jump and in comes the an 'unweighted' swivel, made possible by the early-rise ski tips - a tuck of the knees and you're round. I'm told my freeride skis are also good for pulling off a 'smear', but I dare not ask what one of those is and anyway, we're still negotiating a narrow shoot where, according to the trail map, it's unwise to 'fall out of the saddle'.

By day four, we're feeling pretty tired but there's no stopping now because the snow has finally come. Forty centimetres overnight and it's still coming in hard. The punched bumps and hollows fill with future face-shots and the firs sag and sway with their new white weight. The high wind closes the gondy but we're already at the top, running lap after lap under the 'Stairway to Heaven' chairlift that takes you to the top of Redemption Ridge. While hundreds of frustrated skiers wait down in the village, we track fresh lines through the trees under the chair, the air filling with the whoops of snow-starved skiers and a fine haze of light powder.

By the time the gondola is on the move again, word of the dump has spread as far as Calgary, a 3.5 hour drive to the east. The queue is now huge but if resort planners get their way, this sort of bottle neck will soon become a thing of the past. The resort's master plan includes building more lifts to open up a far wider ski area - as well as adding another 20,000 bed spaces and a golf course. The idea is to take the edge off Kicking Horse's gnarly reputation and open it up to a wider market and for longer periods throughout the year.

At the end of the week - with thighs burning and back aching - I felt like I'd taken a thorough shoeing from this particularly feisty horse. I just hope they don't tame it too much before I get a chance to come back.

Kicking Horse, March 2010 from Robert Leslie on Vimeo.

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Liberia's rubber industry bounces back, defends record

Mon Aug 23, 2:23AM PT - AFP

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London launches 'best' cycle hire scheme

AFP | July 30, 2010

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Skiing in Kicking Horse, March 2010

Kicking Horse, March 2010 from Robert Leslie on Vimeo.

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Salt Lake Pity

Published: Snow Magazine, Dec 2009

Robert Leslie’s reputation as a powder magnet runs out on his first ever ski trip to the States.


Tempting as it was to shout ‘bomb’ to get myself removed from the plane, I instead just sat there and suffered in silence. Waiting to take-off at Salt Lake City International airport, the air outside was thick with cartoon snowflakes that settled on the window and obscured a whitening world beyond.

Anyway, I didn’t want to see how many inches of dry, light powder were falling on the Wasatch Mountains; couldn’t bear the thought of the glades of aspen and pine settling into their winter duvet. Nor did I want to hear the excited chatter of skiers and boarders throughout this part of the Rockies for whom the wait for snow was finally over.

They said I was just ‘unlucky’ and that the usual delivery of early December snow, addressed to Utah, had simply been mishandled by clumsy high altitude winds and deposited on Colorado instead. And while they languished in several feet of snow that was not rightly theirs, Utah had been left twiddling its thumbs.

Unfortunately my Continental flight was only marginally delayed by the storm and I left Utah having only had a whiff of the fabled white stuff on which the state’s reputation as a skier’s mecca is staked.

With typical US modesty, Utah has trademarked the slogan “Greatest Snow On Earth”. The only problem with such bold claims is that they tend to sound silly when the snow doesn’t show.

But, according to the stats, Utah usually does receive the goods – an average annual snowfall of between 300 and 500 inches means the state’s 13 resorts are among the snowiest on the planet.

During the 2007/8 winter, the twin resorts of Alta and Snowbird amassed 700 inches of snow. Tucked away up Little Cottonwood Canyon and just half an hour from downtown Salt Lake, they often get first dibs on any storm rolling in from the west –and hold on to their hoard selfishly.

So it’s no surprise that this where I caught my only glimpse of the fabled Utah snow. I had known that the odds of me finding fathoms of powder at the beginning of December on what was my first ever ski trip to the States were long but I rolled the dice anyway, relying on my uncanny knack of chancing on great snow.

Things started so well. On day one, Alta boasted 10 inches of fresh. Not knowing when I might get my next fill, I promptly gorged myself.


Doing loops on the Collins quad, I found trackless glades underneath the 3374m Mount Baldy, wide powder fields down Greeley Bowl and too many tree-lined steeps to dare to attempt in a morning. Perhaps more surprising to me than the conditions was the fact that all this was legal. As a seasoned European skier, I’m used to the religious demarcation line between piste and off piste as well as that reflex of looking over my shoulder for ski patrollers everytime I dip under a rope or strike up a mountain face with skis on my back.

“So, you mean I can ski anywhere?” I said, exposing my US skiing cherry to my chairlift neighbours. “Yeah, go where you want – as long as you stay inside the outer boundary fence.”

Settling into lunch at the Collins Grill mountain restaurant [I thought they didn’t do mountain eateries in the States?], I still couldn’t believe that I’d ridden the same lift all morning and skied such wide-ranging terrain – and all that without being arrested.

At neighbouring Snowbird, things got even better. A cable car [or ‘tram’ in American] takes you up about 900 vertical metres in minutes leaving almost the entire mountain at your mercy. But it was already mid afternoon and word of the snowfall appeared to have reached Salt Lake City. The tram was loaded with young riders armed with massive powder skis – unshaved and acned faces chewed gum and stared blankly out of the window, assessing their next line of attack through the mist.

Both Alta and Snowbird are ideal hunting grounds for these feral packs of freeriders – there’s a bewildering selection of unpisted black diamond and double diamond bowls, shoots and gullies.

Looking again at my nose-high carving skis I knew I’d made a mistake. “You’ve got to have these skis..” says ski host Jared as we hover on the lip of the double black diamond Upper Cirque, “you can’t ski on those!”. Although, he couldn’t have been too concerned about my welfare because before I could reply, he’d gone, skipping his powder skis – the size of a small catamaran – effortlessly down the 40-degree slope. My carvers just about kept me afloat but after our fourth tram ride and 3,600 vertical metres – I was done.

In all, there are 11 resorts accessible within an hour’s drive from Salt Lake International, meaning you can use the headquarters of the Mormon faith as a base while you pick off the local ski fields during the day. But perhaps I should have stayed at Alta and Snowbird for longer because over the other side of the mountain in Park City, the hills were bone dry and instead of snow-grooming they were still busy snow-making.

The trio of Deer Valley, The Canyons and Park City Mountain Resort [PCMR] offer over 350 runs while nearby Park City with its Old West style main street boasts countless bars and restaurants for après ski. But to earn après ski you of course need a little skiing first – and that was the problem.

“I’ve never seen it like this before” says Andy, my guide at The Canyons, as we ride the only available chairlift for the third time. One of many immigrants from the East Coast, Andy was lured to the Rockies by the promise of white gold. “It’ll come”, he says “we just don’t know when”.

Ski hosts, I’ve decided, are another brilliant American idea. At no cost, an Andy or a Jared will show you around the mountain for as long as you like. The same act in France would involve you having to hire a private ski instructor for the day.

After being needlessly ‘hosted’ down The Canyons’ only piste, I tried my luck at Deer Valley, venue for the slalom, moguls and aerials events during the 2002 Olympics.

In a country where good service is the norm, Deer Valley delivers its form of public-facing pleasantries on a silver spoon. Arriving in resort – just five minutes from down-town Park city – the charm offensive begins.

“Hi, how are you today” [I have intentionally omitted the question mark here], chime a flock of septuagenarian, uniformed ‘greeters’ who whisk away skis and bags across the under-floor-heated concourse before you’ve even realised what’s happening. You are then concierged, hosted, greeted and ushered to within an inch of your life. I’m convinced that, if you asked nicely, someone would even ski all the runs for you. Although on this occasion, it wasn’t necessary - I thought I could manage all three of them by myself.

Catching the Carpenter Express chairlift doesn’t get you any further away from this confusion of kindness. Mountain hosts litter the landscape, compressed by the limited available terrain into roaming packs of ‘pleasers’. Get this: not only does Deer Valley restrict skier numbers to 6,500 but in peak season it lays on 3,000 staff to service their every needs. Do the math.

Of course all this service comes at a cost. A one-day lift ticket costs $83 compared to $64 at Alta or $79 at The Canyons. Oh and if you want to spend a night at the luxury Stein Erikson Lodge, prices for a double room in mid season start at 750 dollars.

Deer Valley is no ordinary resort and unsurprisingly this is prime star-spotting territory. The day I was there, a celebrity slalom was taking place. There was the guy from Beverley Hills 90210, the one from Seinfeld, the chap from the Sopranos and the one that’s married to Gwen Stefani. As if the day couldn’t get any more surreal, one final ‘host’ stepped up:

“Hi, how was your day?*”

“Well, I skied all three runs…”

“Oh, great – how was the snow?*”

“Er, man-made and a bit over-crowded.”

“Oh great – have a nice day!”

“OK, er… thanks”

[* Use of question mark is optional here]

Fortunately there are other things to do apart from skiing. The Olympic park with its fully-functional ski jump hill and bobsled track are impressive and for $200 you can even jump in a sled and experience the 5 G’s of force and 80 miles-an-hour speeds for yourself.

Park City nightlife can also prove a distraction. The main street being a pinball alley of bars and restaurants, and contrary to popular belief, disappointed skiers can actually drown their sorrows in Utah without being clapped in irons. The drinking rules are complex though and unless you’re eating food or are a ‘member’ of a bar [which costs $5 for you or someone who’ll ‘sponsor’ you], beer is limited to 3.2% in strength and wines and spirits are out of the question.

But no amount of weak beer or silver-spooned cheer could make up for the missed miles of skiing in my poor underused legs. Taking off from Salt Lake airport, the ground almost instantly disappeared in a whirl of crystalline white. Utah was finally getting its delivery – a little late – but in sufficient quantities to convince me to make a mental note to return, soon, and with much bigger skis.

British airports trial body scanners

Britain will soon introduce its first full-body scanners at London's Heathrow airport in the wake of the failed Detroit plane bombing. One airport already trialling the technology is Manchester where security officials hope to use the new scanners to speed up security checks and minimise the chances of a repeat attack.



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London 2012 Olympic site takes shape

Agence France-Presse
Jan. 11, 2010



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