Canadian Mountain Holidays

CMH Kootenay is all about skiing. With two mountain ranges and endless valleys of perfectly spaced trees and open bowls, it's a skier's paradise. We are blessed with abundant snowfall and have so much terrain, we never run out of fresh slopes to ride.

Kootenay offers flexible trip dates and convenient travel options, ideal for strong skiers heli-skiing for the first time or for those with limited time off. Our guides are experts at choosing terrain, and while we usually stay out all day, taking a break is always an option.

Guests stay in the Tenderfoot Lodge in downtown Nakusp, on the shores of Arrow Lake, south of Revelstoke. The lodge is owned and operated by CMH. We access our ski areas from several staging points, using vans to transport guests to the helicopters.

Hard-core skiers and riders should consider our Powder Max program, offered only at Kootenay throughout the ski season.

“The difference between the steep skiing here and the steep skiing in Alaska,” proclaimed one guest from Anchorage, “is that in Alaska you can see the steep runs because there are no trees. In the Kootenay we ski just as steep, but it doesn’t look so steep because it is all in the forest.”

The famous ski areas of Snowbird and Alta are almost indistinguishable from the surrounding backcountry, indicating minimal tree cutting was necessary to create a ski resort compared to the famous resorts in Colorado and other areas where many runs are virtually clear-cuts in thick forest. Likewise, the Kootenay region could be home to dozens of massive ski resorts, and not a single tree would have to be cut to make fantastic runs. CMH claims 230 runs, but the number is utterly irrelevant. The names are for reference rather than indicating any sort of boundary between the runs. There are hundreds that have never been skied, and it could just as accurately be said that the Kootenay region is one big ski run.

Some areas can become skied out during periods without fresh snow, but in Kootenay “skied out” is an unused phrase. Features like the huge Empress Bowl beg to be skied again and again. A frequent Kootenay guest remembers his group counting a thousand tracks down Empress bowl by the end of a day. The southern Kootenay ski terrain takes time to learn. There are few big peaks to stand out as landmarks in the middle of the tenure, and every face of every ridge appears to be the best ski run around. A typical day includes so many different valleys that all but the most seasoned Kootenay skiers become lost within the maze of ridges and valleys.

From Bugaboo Dreams by Topher Donahue