Table of contents for Winter 2022 in Ski Canada

It was too icy for Martin Olson, Ski Canada’s technical editor emeritus, to go back out after lunch the other day, and since my back was starting to turn into a question mark from too much time hunched over the computer, we had a long-needed catch-up call. One of our rants quickly ensued, this time about speed. “Skiing, driving, living…life is just too fast these days,” said Olson definitively. “And that’s the problem with the world today: speed. Well, speed—and Facebook.” The conversation’s levity stopped abruptly, though, when I brought up the horrifically sad news of a little British girl who died on a beginner run at Flaine in the French Alps in mid-January. In a Saturday-morning class with four other innocents led by their ski instructor, five-year-old Ophelie was…

The plans are ambitious, but it’s not as if there isn’t a successful precedent set for big real estate plays at lakeside ski resorts a short drive from Ottawa. The owners of Ontario’s Calabogie Peaks could look to the transformation of Mont Tremblant in the 1990s for inspiration as plans roll out to turn this out-of-the-way ski hill into a bustling four-season resort. With 29 ski trails and the largest vertical drop (238 metres) at a non-private ski hill in Ontario, Calabogie Peaks is no slouch. But located on its own in the Upper Ottawa Valley, just south of the ghost town of Balaclava, it isn’t on the radar of many destination skiers. Its ranks of regulars come from Ottawa and Kingston, yes, but also from towns that might be…

My friend Paul and I first spied the inviting, untracked face from the lift. It would take a bit of hiking but the reward would be first tracks on a beautiful pitch. It looked simple to find: follow an obvious spur ridge until we saw the opening in the trees. Easy. Twenty minutes later I was hanging off a tree above a cliff while my buddy Paul was contemplating hiking back out. We survived to ride the lift back up and see where we’d gone wrong: we’d turned right one opening too soon. I’d like to say that I learned my lesson that day and have never lost my way in technical terrain again—but I can’t. What makes my many misadventures even more frustrating is that the pros seem to…

Ontario ski areas are not the steepest, their snowpack is not the deepest, their vertical is neither epic nor the stuff of legend. But if the outcry over the pandemic-induced shuttering of its slopes was any indication, there’s plenty of love out there for the province’s ski scene. With 60-plus hills, resorts and clubs caught up in a four-week provincewide lockdown beginning on Boxing Day 2020, the #SkiON23 hashtag quickly rose to prominence as a show of support for a January 23 reopening. But it was not to be. Doug Ford and company extended the lockdown until February 16, dashing the hopes of resort operators and skiers alike, and giving rise to the ultimately successful #SkiON16 hashtag. Across the Canadian ski community, there was an outpouring of sympathy for Ontario’s…

THE SENDING GAMES The Freeride World Tour by Alpina Watches takes some of the best skiers to the most “Mythic Mountain Faces” every season, and for the fourth time its only North American stop is at Kicking Horse in Golden, B.C., on the “Ozone” face, February 12-17. It’s an event made for spectators and FWT announcer and coach, Derek Foose, says, “The community gets behind the event and they get a great crowd watching on the Stairway Ridge. It’s just the ultimate viewing spot.” This year spectators can cheer on reigning world champions Elisabeth Gerritzen (Switzerland) and Kristofer Turdell (Sweden), who also won at Kicking Horse in 2020. And there are Canadians to root for as well. “Olivia McNeill is a rookie, but she won almost every junior contest held…

After a too-long hiatus, a ski-starved Brit beached in Portugal was finally able to pack her bags for a long-awaited season in Sun Peaks. Last winter was her only missed ski season since 1973, so plans had to be pandemic-proof. First into the carry-on: vaccination certificate, Canadian passport, masks, sanitizer and kilos of COVID-aptability. Using year-old credit vouchers, her flight was rescheduled by KLM three times. The first four-month cabin rental fell through when the owner sold during Sun Peaks’s pandemic property boom. The second rental was more expensive but doable given last winter’s ski fund was still intact and the new digs came with a slopeside hot tub. Hundreds of Americans, Aussies, Kiwis and Euros, who were denied their 2021 Sun Peaks powder, had to brainstorm their “long-stay” return…

Drills help develop new movement patterns and bring awareness of the resulting sensation that a skier should feel. A good coach will explain the drill and prompt the skier to focus on the part of his or her body where the new sensation will be present. Done well, the skier will be able to drop the drill, return to real skiing and still feel the new sensation, indicating that the new move has been successfully incorporated into his skiing. Here, the skier is using one-footed turns to achieve balance over the turning ski, thereby improving grip and creating a rounded turn. Lifting up the inside ski enables him to feel the load under his turning foot. After a few repetitions, he can return to twofooted skiing to see if the…

At press time in mid-January, both Alpine Canada and the Canadian Olympic Committee were standing fast in their commitment to sending athletes to the Olympics, leaving any boycott to the diplomats. ACA President Therese Brisson and COC CEO David Shoemaker were concerned about the fate of Canadian athletes who tested positive before departure or once the Games were underway. Right now Chinese law states that all foreign nationals who test positive are expected to quarantine in place in China for up to five weeks. The Beijing Bubble could work out well or be filled with disappointing or scary anecdotes. These “Guessing Games” will certainly be one for the record books. GIVING IT OUR BEST SHOT Here are seven names Ski Canada will be cheering for in the alpine skiing events.…

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How much do you need to tip your skis up on edge? It’s all good news: you don’t need to think about it! When riding your bike, you don’t think about leaning the bike into a turn. You instinctively know how to balance between the forces pulling you into the turn and pulling you out of it. The faster you go and the tighter the turn, the more you must move to counter the forces generated. Skiing is the same. As you move the hips inside the turn the skis naturally tip up on edge and their sidecut begins the turn. Edging isn’t something you actively do, but something that innately happens as a result of balancing well against the turning forces. And that’s one less thing to think about.…

With the Winter Olympics underway in Beijing, China, the Summer Games a recent memory, and a committee working on a Vancouver 2030 Winter Games bid, the Olympics are especially en ce moment. At the same time, Ski Canada celebrates 50 years of publishing. Bring it all together and there’s never been a better time to look back at how the Olympic dream has shaped skiing in Canada and around the world. THE EARLY YEARS Montreal was the first Canadian city to bid on the Winter Games and it did so tenaciously. The city tried four times, aiming to host the 1932, 1936, 1944 and 1956 Games. (Montreal simultaneously bid on the 1944 and 1956 Summer Games, too.) At the time, skiing was a small part of the extravaganza, and the…

The first time I thought a groomed run might be more than learning terrain was when I demoed a pair of Elan SCX, one of the first shaped skis. I took them for a rip on the lower slopes of Lake Louise, a part of the resort I normally only graced because there was no other way to get home. Like popping a pill, the SCX’s deep sidecut turned predictable groomers into a rolling playground for air turns, hand-dragging carves and a new ski phenomenon: trench digging. Since that magic run in 1993, I’ve become more and more of a fan of corduroy as skis have become more shaped, powerful and easier to carve. This fits a familiar pattern for snow grooming and snowcats. Their histories followed ski innovation, and…