Nakiska opened today - My impressions

Nakiska is one of the 4 RCR resorts in Western Canada. That is Resorts of the Canadian Rockies.  The other 3 are: Fernie, Kimberley, and Kicking Horse, .... all three clustered around highway 95, which runs north-south from Coeur d'Alene (Idaho) to Golden (British Columbia).  Well, technically, Fernie is almost an hour's drive away from highway 95.  But Nakiska is many, many hours farther out east, in Alberta.  In fact, Nakiska is the closest ski area to Calgary, so it gets very crowded on weekends.

Nakiska was one of the venues for the Calgary Winter Olympics in 1988, and it might host the Olympics again in 2026.

So, ski racing is a big part of the local ski culture here. Today, half of the people on the slopes were young racers in training.  They had their own race course set up on a trail that was closed o the public.  But, after they were done with the race course, they came out onto the public slopes and continued practicing their carving technique.

A jumbo jet could land here.  Wide trails with lots of corduroy everywhere.
This setup invites speeding, because there is nothing else to do.

In a way, most of the groomed trails at Nakiska seem to have been designed for racing, or at least high speed skiing.  The trails are very wide, like airport runways.  That makes them kind of boring, and also makes them all look very much alike.  Since there is nothing else to occupy your attention, the wide open trails practically invite high speed skiing, since it is the only available entertainment.

Some time very recently, Nakiska added some "gladed" terrain. They call it the "Monster Glades". Aha! Some nice tree skiing, I thought.  But this is not the kind of tree skiing I was expecting.  It's not a forest that was thinned so you could use the trees as slalom gates.  No, the trees have not been thinned. Instead, they were like clear-cut along some long lines, so that there are now relatively wide passages within the forest.  You are not skiing through the trees. You are skiing through these spaces cut in the forest. And these spaces develop big moguls.  So, you are really just skiing ungroomed bump runs that happen to be surrounded by trees.

Everywhere else, outside of these Monster Glades, the trees are always extremely tight and with lots of brush and fallen branches and trees, so it's like an impenetrable jungle.  The only place where you can ski is the very wide trails.  And those wide trails invite speeding.

I was impressed by the amount of vertical available.  The statistics say it is 2,400 vertical feet, but somehow it feels like it's more.

There are 3 high-speed quads here.  But one of those three serves only as a backup on weekends. During mid-week, only 2 high speed quads are operating.  One serves the lower mountain, and the other goes much higher up.

From the top of the highest chairlift, there is also a platter lift that could take you up to the very top of the mountain on a very steep slope.  But this lift wasn't operating today. In fact, I don't think it has operated at all this winter, because the snow would have to be groomed differently to allow access to those higher slopes. Right now, there is just a big wall of snow that makes it impossible for someone to ride the platter lift.   Also, those upper slopes need more snow to cover up the small trees growing there.  The snow probably gets blown away from that relatively bald top of the mountain.

Overall, for me, it was a so-so day.  I wish the slopes were a bit more varied.  I wish there was at least some more accessible powder skiing available.  And I wish that I didn't have to constantly watch over my shoulder for some unexpected high-speed kamikaze carving down the slope at top speed.

NOTE ABOUT THE NEXT DAY
Tomorrow (Thursday) I will not be able to post another entry in this blog.  It will be a long day with lots of skiing and lots of driving, and I probably won't get to the next motel until late at night.  At that point, I'll be too tired, so I'll just go to sleep right away.

I will hit two ski areas tomorrow.  First: Castle Mountain.  This is one of the newest Powder Alliance ski areas and I am looking forward to seeing it.

After skiing at Castle, I will drive for about an hour, and then I'll do some night skiing at Pass Powderkeg ski area, starting around 5:30 pm.  This is a small ski area, but I want to give it a try.  After that, I'll have a 4-hour long drive to Salmo, British Columbia.  During this drive, I will cross from Alberta into British Columbia.

Starting shortly after I leave Castle Mountain tomorrow, and for the next 3 days, I will be following highway 3 that goes east-west just a little above the US border.

The next update in this blog will be in a couple of days.