Small, cold and refreshing—the ski hills of Northern BC through the lens* of photographer Kari Medig.

photography :: Kari Medig // words :: Emily Nilsen

Burned out by hour-long morning lift lines? How about ski hill parking lots packed like a tin of Tesla sardines or day tickets the price of a one-way flight to a beachside mojito? Rest assured, there’s an antidote: the great north.

Far from the uber-luxe crowds, BC’s northern interior ski scene is refreshingly unpretentious, filled with salt-of-the-earth snow sliders who love big open skies and—to aptly stereotype—really big trucks. School-bus cabins, camo hoodies and a rock-solid community feel are just a few traits that give northern ski hills their down-to-earth chops.

Timothy Kari Medig 198 — Ryleigh Walker and David Hill, both from 100 Mile House, at the end of their ski day at Mount Timothy near Lac la Hache, BC. Ryleigh, a first-year skier, “loves the wintertime,” she says. “I love snow…it’s just calming, going back and forth.” David, a snowboarder for 15 years, on what’s unique about Timothy: “It’s nice that it’s local. You don’t have a lot of people. You’re down to the bottom and you’re back on the lift in a second.”

To document this ski culture, photographer Kari Medig set off on a 10-day voyage visiting seven hills of the north, an area close to Medig’s heart. Raised in a log cabin on the shores of Babine Lake, he caught the skiing bug as a kid, soloing runs on Hudson Bay Mountain near Smithers. One of his early childhood memories is of being rescued by ski patrol, after-hours and out of bounds, trembling like a little hare. Fuelled by nostalgia (and he admits, double doubles with non-alcoholic Baileys) Medig spent the bulk of the latest Christmas season going hill to hill, from Troll Resort in the east to Shames Mountain in the west, tuning in to people who make these places tick.

Timothy Kari Medig 183 — The chairlift at the base of Mount Timothy, a privately owned north-facing ski hill in BC’s Cariboo region.

More than half of BC lives in the lower mainland, or snug up against the southern border. To many people, the north is a faraway place where trees are logged, gas is drilled and mines are aplenty. To many more people, the north is vaguely somewhere up there. Sure, it’s remote, but to the people who live there, lack of proximity to a metropolis gives the north something many skiers long for: space.

Medig’s images celebrate the spirit of northern ski hills and offer a glimpse into worlds far from mega-resorts, where the best thing to spend is time: sliding over snow, amongst the evergreens—and occasionally in jeans.