As Canadian ski hills go, Red Mountain is not usually high on your “off the top of the head” lists. There’s Tremblant, Blue, Whistler Blackcomb, and Banff, with a smattering of Revelstoke and Kicking Horse, for example, thrown in for your hipster skiers. You know the ones. Man, there’s sooo many tourists here. I’ve been coming here for years, and it was way better before it got all corporate.
(*Side note: if that sounds like something you’d say, there’s a slight chance no one likes you.)
The point being, there are dozens of lesser known resort towns all over North America, and every so often a couple of them break into the big leagues. In the last few years, Red has been knocking at the door of the big boys club.
Situated just outside of Rossland, BC, Red Mountain is a quick drive from Castlegar airport, or a not-so-quick drive from Spokane, WA. Until recently, it was one of those places you’d only hear about in the evenings, where your buddy just got back from the best ski trip of his life. Spoken in hushed tones, lest the local snow gods punish him, and with a look of nostalgic wonder, he’d try to tell you of this jewel in the interior of BC that defies mere words in its beauty and terrain. But lately, Red has been getting a little more traction online, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly: why are we talking about the snowy season in August? Well, just last month, Red Resort announced that it was opening up almost 200 more acres on nearby Mount Kirkup, exclusively for cat-access skiing. A whole new playground available almost overnight in an already profoundly awesome region…
How awesome? Well, as it happens, Red has been scoring pretty highly in Powderhound.com’s Best Ski Areas in Canada, scoring Best Off-Piste Terrain (tied with giant Whistler Blackcomb), and Best Treeskiing, alongside Whitewater. These two awards are testament enough, then you find out they’re also one of Canada’s Best Ski Resorts for low cost (sharing another title with Whitewater.)
So, okay. Great technical trees and general slackcountry action for you real enthusiasts, and more access to deeper snow slated for this upcoming winter. Why not take the massive bull that is the Internet by the horns and create your own viral video for the American market? RED Sucks might be the best ski-based marketing campaign around, taking that thing everyone (seriously, everyone) loves to do online – complain – and poke fun at themselves…
“…(T)heir hot chocolate is way too chocolatey. The snow’s too light and fluffy. You can barely see the trees under all the powder. And who wants to shovel their car out at the end of the day? With thirty feet of fresh a year, that’s wayyy too much snow.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Z0MBLHF20]Despite its history as a ski hill spanning over 100 years, it seems Red has evolved into the early 20s ski bum that we all once were, and translated it into an easily accessible online presence. Happiness can come from the strangest places. You sometimes have to go find them. After all, you never found the Comics section on the Front Page of the newspaper growing up.
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I was visited by a friend from Alberta at the lake yesterday. He said he visited Red two years ago and it was the best ski hill he had ever seen. So I bragged about the new hill that was added last season. I’m pretty sure he’ll be back and with his buddies. We are all proud of our hill and it’s history. It seems odd but there are probably more Europeans that know about Red than Canadians, because of its racing heritage. There aren’t many racers that went anywhere that haven’t raced at Red.