Just got back a week ago from an amazing 5 day ski trip to Red Mountain in British Columbia.
The drive from Seattle took about 6 hours, but was beautiful with very little traffic. Border wait times did not exist but neither did duty free as this border crossing is in the middle of nowhere. What was really funny was that the drive up to the Canadian border was all green and brown foliage and not a lick of snow, and almost immediately as we crossed the border everything turned white like we crossed a magic line into the great white north lol.
Our home base was the Prestige Mountain Resort in Rossland. This hotel is a great value at about $160 cdn a night. The free shuttle to Red Mountain stops in front of it and their is a liquor store and brew pub across the street. There is also a great cafe, lounge and restaurant in the hotel but every other restaurant or coffee shop in town is less than a 5 minute walk.
For dinner in town we highly recommend the following places:
Now if you go to Red, we highly recommend spending a night in the Constella Cabins. They have built 6 small cabins and a clubhouse not eh backside of the mountain. With nine of us spread across 3 cabins they let us book a Wednesday night and we had the entire place to ourself. Booking includes a multi course dinner served up by the overnight attendant who cooked everything fresh for us that evening. The attendant also doubles as a bartender and baked fresh muffins and cinnamon buns in the morning for breakfast along with pannini breakfast sandwiches. Around 8 pm that night Deborah (our attendant) made a fire for us outside, brought out everything we need to make s'mores and set up a telescope for star gazing. For the 9 of us staying there worked out to less thank $120USD per person and was a fantastic experience. This is highly recommended.
We also booked a day of cat skiing with Big Red Cats. This was absolutely the highlight of our trip. In the two weeks before our arrival they had received between 6-8 feet of snow and the temps stayed cold. That meant every run was super deep dry blower POW. This cat ski operation is one of the biggest in North America and can operate up to 6 cats at the same time. They service the 7 summits and have over 1000 runs. They told us they typically go up to a month without skiing the same run twice. Another unique thing about this operations is that they offer different levels of challenge starting with intermediate up through pro, so they do have a lot of options for skiers of different levels. We opted for the advance level but they upped the difficulty after everyone in our group hit a series of 8-10 foot drops on the first run ... to be clear I did not do this on purpose, but found it quite enjoyable on the Blizzard Spurs I rented. Taking these drops on super fat skis in deep pow made landing much more enjoyable. In total we got about 12k vert over 10 runs. All of their skiing is below the tree line so lots of tree skiing mixed in with cut blocks and tree farms (in summer there is an active forestry industry here). Our guides were fantastic and the skiing was Epic. A day of cat skiing was around $700 cdn which we felt was well worth it.
Overall skiing Red was one of our most memorable and most affordable ski trips. The bang for you buck here is just as Epic as the terrain we skied. In total 5 nights hotel, meals and cat skiing worked out to about $1500 USD which is about the same as one night at Whistler lol. The other thing we noticed that we really liked was that all the restaurants, even the ones on hill seemed to make/bake everything onsite. Red is so far away from most big cities that this may be done out of necessity, but we really enjoyed it as the food quality and freshness was second to none ... oh and the prices were quite reasonable. We will definitely be heading back to Red as it is really an awesome skis destination.
The drive from Seattle took about 6 hours, but was beautiful with very little traffic. Border wait times did not exist but neither did duty free as this border crossing is in the middle of nowhere. What was really funny was that the drive up to the Canadian border was all green and brown foliage and not a lick of snow, and almost immediately as we crossed the border everything turned white like we crossed a magic line into the great white north lol.
Our home base was the Prestige Mountain Resort in Rossland. This hotel is a great value at about $160 cdn a night. The free shuttle to Red Mountain stops in front of it and their is a liquor store and brew pub across the street. There is also a great cafe, lounge and restaurant in the hotel but every other restaurant or coffee shop in town is less than a 5 minute walk.
For dinner in town we highly recommend the following places:
- The Flying Steamshovel Gastropub the food here was quite good and they had lots of beer on tap
- Gabriella's - This is located in the Prestige Hotel and is actually three places as they operate a nice coffee shop with a full breakfast menu, a lounge that has a great happy hour and the Restaurant which serves fantastic Italian food. With 24 hours notice you can book the taste of Italy 7 course meal which looked great and was only $70cdn per person. We really liked the home made pasta
- Idgie's Restaurant - a relaxed fine dining place with a nice menu and great service
- Alpine Grind Coffee House - they got the beans and there coffee is great!! they also offer nice sandwiches and backed goods
- Hooper's Baker - this bakery is off the hook. Their baguettes looking amazing and they probably have the best scones outside the UK.
Now if you go to Red, we highly recommend spending a night in the Constella Cabins. They have built 6 small cabins and a clubhouse not eh backside of the mountain. With nine of us spread across 3 cabins they let us book a Wednesday night and we had the entire place to ourself. Booking includes a multi course dinner served up by the overnight attendant who cooked everything fresh for us that evening. The attendant also doubles as a bartender and baked fresh muffins and cinnamon buns in the morning for breakfast along with pannini breakfast sandwiches. Around 8 pm that night Deborah (our attendant) made a fire for us outside, brought out everything we need to make s'mores and set up a telescope for star gazing. For the 9 of us staying there worked out to less thank $120USD per person and was a fantastic experience. This is highly recommended.
We also booked a day of cat skiing with Big Red Cats. This was absolutely the highlight of our trip. In the two weeks before our arrival they had received between 6-8 feet of snow and the temps stayed cold. That meant every run was super deep dry blower POW. This cat ski operation is one of the biggest in North America and can operate up to 6 cats at the same time. They service the 7 summits and have over 1000 runs. They told us they typically go up to a month without skiing the same run twice. Another unique thing about this operations is that they offer different levels of challenge starting with intermediate up through pro, so they do have a lot of options for skiers of different levels. We opted for the advance level but they upped the difficulty after everyone in our group hit a series of 8-10 foot drops on the first run ... to be clear I did not do this on purpose, but found it quite enjoyable on the Blizzard Spurs I rented. Taking these drops on super fat skis in deep pow made landing much more enjoyable. In total we got about 12k vert over 10 runs. All of their skiing is below the tree line so lots of tree skiing mixed in with cut blocks and tree farms (in summer there is an active forestry industry here). Our guides were fantastic and the skiing was Epic. A day of cat skiing was around $700 cdn which we felt was well worth it.
Overall skiing Red was one of our most memorable and most affordable ski trips. The bang for you buck here is just as Epic as the terrain we skied. In total 5 nights hotel, meals and cat skiing worked out to about $1500 USD which is about the same as one night at Whistler lol. The other thing we noticed that we really liked was that all the restaurants, even the ones on hill seemed to make/bake everything onsite. Red is so far away from most big cities that this may be done out of necessity, but we really enjoyed it as the food quality and freshness was second to none ... oh and the prices were quite reasonable. We will definitely be heading back to Red as it is really an awesome skis destination.
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