In September 2025, I spent 2.5 weeks hiking around the Dolomites in Italy. The main reason for the trip was an 8-day trek on the famous Alta Via 1 trail, but while in the region, I was keen to see as much of the highlights as possible. I hiked the Tre Cime di Lavaredo trail before I did the Alta Via 1 and then after I finished, I decided to spend a few days in the Val Gardena region. We finished our hike in Belluno, which is only ~2 hours away from Val Gardena by car, but a whole day journey by public transit, involving 5 different buses and trains.
While Cortina is directly north of Venice, Val Gardena is north of Verona, with Bolzano being the closest major train station. From there, you can bus into the valley where there are tons of attractions to explore. There are a few different towns you can stay in. I opted for Ortisei, which is the largest town along the valley. If you’re staying in a participating hotel, you can get a free bus pass for the region, which is a nice benefit.
Ortisei is very quaint and it’s a great starting point to explore a lot of the popular attractions in the area. There are dozens of cable cars connecting the towns to the mountains. In the winter, they’re used for skiing, while in the summer, you can use them to access hikes. The most popular hike in the area is Seceda, which is located at the top of the Seceda cable car in the middle of town. If you’re planning a trip to the Dolomites, chances are you’re already very familiar with Seceda. I would say Seceda is to Val Gardena what Tre Cime is to Cortina (and what Lake Louise is to Banff).
While I had amazing weather when I hiked the Alta Via 1 in late September, it started to get cold pretty much right after I finished the trail. I decided to hike Seceda on my first day in Ortisei because the weather was supposed to deteriorate later in the week. I knew it would be very busy at the top, so I got up early enough to get the first gondola. I packed my bag in advance and headed off towards the cable car, but on my way there, I noticed a fresh dusting of snow at the top of the mountain. I decided to backtrack to get my microspikes, which I had carried all the way from home. It was definitely the right decision and I’ve never felt more smug about having my microspikes than I did watching the other tourists slide around the trail!
I got unbelievably lucky with Seceda. A lot of people visit to see the rolling green hills. I did not get to experience this, but I did get to visit on the first snowfall of the year when the mountain was backed by a vibrant blue sky. It looked so beautiful, I wasn’t even a little bit sad about missing the meadows. Going early was the right call. There’s a mixture of trails that you can explore when you visit Seceda. Many people just hike up to the viewpoint and then go back, but if you have the time, I recommend planning for a loop trail. When you get off the cable car, start with the short hike up to the peak. It gives you incredible views of both the surrounding mountains and the main Seceda viewpoint. It will get busy later in the day, so do this first.
From there, continue over to the turnstiles and pay to do the extra walk along to the private viewpoint. I know these turnstiles are very controversial, but my opinion is that, as a tourist, you should just get over it. The trail is located on private farmland, so even though you’re going to be annoyed about paying a lot money for the gondola, only to pay another 5 euro to the farmers, consider it a contribution to the local economy. Sure, the government and the farmers should be working out this issue directly, but that is the point of the turnstiles – it’s a form of protest. So if you’re a visitor, just respect the farmers and pay the fee or don’t visit the viewpoint. C’est la vie.
I paid the fee and it was well worth it because it was still not very busy at the top and I had incredible views and thoroughly enjoyed my time there. From the end of the paid trail, a lot of people will just return to the gondola, but I highly recommend extending your journey. The views got better and better all day and I ended up doing a 10.5km loop trail (with 500m of elevation gain) to see more of the scenery. Just be aware, you’re starting at the top and will be hiking down, so save some energy for the return trip back up to the gondola.
Like I said, it was snowy when I visited and my microspikes helped a lot with traction. Eventually the sun warmed up the snow and it got slushy and I didn’t need the microspikes anymore, but it was really slippery at first and I was glad to have them on the downhill sections. I’ve included a map of my route above. After I did the Seceda viewpoint, I continued on to the Pieralongia hut, followed by the Regensburger-firenze hut. This was by far my favourite section of the hike. It felt like I was the only person on the trail. I didn’t stop at Pieralongia, but I look a break at Regenburger for a hot chocolate and cake.
After my snack, I continued back towards the gondola and past the Baita Troier hut. This section of trail is also quite popular as it hikes along a little ridge with fabulous views. By this point in the day it was starting to get a lot busier, but still not too bad. Once I got back to the junction with the paid trail, it was very busy and I was glad to be on my way out. I decided to take the gondola straight back down and I had lunch in town. In total, I was hiking for about 4 hours, but like I said, I did cover 500 metres in elevation gain, so it can still be a pretty strenuous hike. Since I was alone, my pace was likely faster than it would be if I hiked with a friend.
I honestly debated if I should hike Seceda at all. I thought it might be overrated since it’s so popular, but I ended up having a great time and I don’t regret going. Me and Kristine had separated by this point in the trip and I was own my own, but I still had so much fun and would absolutely return. I wasn’t there during peak season, I’m sure it’s worse in the middle of the summer, so plan accordingly. It’s a popular hike for a good reason!
Last winter I set myself a goal of visiting more huts, planning 3 separate trips across the season. As is often the case in winter, the avalanche conditions didn’t align with my trips and I ended up bailing on two of three huts. Fortunately, I had a fantastic time at the Elfin Hut, but was left feeling a bit disappointed about the other trips.
This winter I planned 4 hut trips! The first trip was a bust again, due to weather, and one trip has yet to happen, but I was successful in visiting two of the ACC huts in mid February! The ACC is the Alpine Club of Canada, which is a great organization if you’re looking to grow your mountaineering skills. It has an annual membership, but one of the unique features of being a member is access to a large network of huts throughout BC and Alberta, as well as the ability to participate in trainings, trips, and events. You can still stay in the huts if you are not a member, but you get priority booking as a member (and a small discount on the cost), so it can be hard to book some of the huts without having the advance booking privileges.
I’m no stranger to snow camping and have spent many trips sleeping in the snow in a tent. But since I’ve taken up ski touring, I have to admit, there’s a certain advantage to staying in huts and being able to travel with a smaller pack. It’s much harder to ski with a full pack that includes a -30 degree sleeping bag and a winter tent, so we’ve largely switched to hut camping in the winter.
Since most of the ACC huts are located in the Rocky Mountains, this year I decided to plan a whole trip around skiing in the Rockies. I took one week off work and planned to do a few days resort skiing at Revelstoke with friends, before doing some ski touring with Brandon to the A.O. Wheeler Hut in Glacier National Park and the Elizabeth Parker Hut in Yoho National Park. We planned to finish with a day of resort skiing at Kicking Horse, but I ended up bailing on that day to rest and watch some of the Olympic finals.
After 3 days in Revelstoke, Brandon and I overpacked his 4runner to drive an hour to the Wheeler trailhead in Glacier National Park. I am, of course, talking about the Glacier Park located in BC, and not the one located in Montana. I feel like this park is hugely underrated and I’ve been wanting to explore more of it, so we booked one night at the Wheeler Hut to check it out.
The Wheeler Hut is one of the ACC’s most accessible huts and it’s a great option in the winter especially. In the summer, it’s basically located at the parking lot next to Illecillewaet Campground, but in the winter, you have to use the winter lot, so it’s a flat 1.5km hike to the hut instead. There’s a small picnic shelter and outhouse located at the trailhead. It’s a short walk up through the trees, and then it’s dead flat for 1.5km on a wide winter road. There’s no avalanche risk along the road, so you can feel pretty confident in visiting it at any time of year, regardless of your skill level.
When we visited, literally everyone in the cabin was on touring skis, most of which were planning to ski some bigger terrain nearby, but this would still be a good hut to visit on snowshoes or cross country skis. It was the middle of the week, so I think the hut likely attracts more families on weekends. I didn’t have any trouble booking the hut for a weeknight, and it wasn’t full, but I believe it’s very popular on the weekends. Booking through the ACC, you get access to bookings 6 months ahead of your travel date if you are a member, or 3 months ahead of your travel date if you are not a member.
In addition to the hut booking, there are several permits that are required from Parks Canada. You will need the standard Parks Canada Pass to leave in your vehicle, which is currently free in the summer, but still comes for a fee in the winter. You can buy it as an annual pass for your party, which we already had, or you can buy a day pass for each person on the trip. If you’re going to spend more than a week with 2 people in National Parks, I recommend the annual pass.
In addition to the Parks Pass, you are also required to obtain a free Winter Permit from Parks Canada if you are recreating in Glacier National Park. It’s a really interesting park because the Trans Canada Highway runs through the middle, which is extremely mountainous and potentially dangerous in the winter. The road passes through Rogers Pass, which has a bit of a reputation locally. Because the highway runs straight through the mountains, there is considerable avalanche risk, which is managed using explosives. In fact, Glacier National Park is home to the world’s largest mobile avalanche control program.
As a result, sections of the park are regularly shut down for avalanche control and it is completely illegal and extremely dangerous to be in those sections of the park when they are closed (as they will be setting off explosives and triggering avalanches). In order to manage the risk and ensure that people know how to check where they should and shouldn’t be, Parks Canada requires every single visitor recreating in the park to obtain a free Winter Permit every winter. In order to get the permit, you have to learn about the avalanche control program and complete a 30 minute quiz. It’s not difficult, but at the end you will receive a winter permit and parking pass.
If you’re staying at the Wheeler Hut, you’ll require a hut booking, the standard National Park Pass, the Winter Permit, the Winter Pemit Parking Pass, and an Overnight Parking Pass, which you can obtain from emailing Parks Canada (instructions are included as part of the Winter Permit process). It does sound quite complicated, but once you complete the Winter Permit quiz, the requirements will become much more obvious.
Once you’ve obtained all the appropriate permits, you’re ready for a fun trip to the hut. I was on touring skis and Brandon was on a splitboard, so it didn’t take us too long to get to the hut. The trail looks flat, but I think it might be ever so slightly uphill on the way there, because we were a lot faster on the way out. We arrived at the hut around 12:30pm and it was completely empty because all the current residents were out ski touring for the day. We had lunch and set up our beds before getting ready to go out and do a little exploring of our own.
I’m not super knowledgeable on the terrain around the Wheeler Hut, so I’ll just give a quick overview. If you don’t have Avalanche Safety Training, you’ll want to stick pretty close to the hut when exploring, but there are a few relatively safe options to check out. There are two trails from the hut, which includes the Perley Rock/Sir Donald Trail and the Asulkan Valley Trail. I didn’t do the Perley Rock Trail, which is closest to the hut, but you can follow it along the river in simple terrain for 1-2km. Stick to flat terrain – once the trail starts to get steeper or exposed to open mountain slopes, it’s time to turn around.
We opted to take the Asulkan Valley Trail, which starts in a meadow as opposed to the trees. We followed the trail until we hit a branch, where we took the left fork onto the Great Glacier Trail. We followed that trail for ~1km, until we hit the Illecelliwaet River, where there is a great view of some really big mountain terrain. That’s where we opted to turn around because we didn’t want to expose ourselves to any risk and the avalanche forecast was considerable.
Another option is to continue further up the Asulkan Valley Trail, from what I understand, you can go another half a kilometre up that trail until you hit a bridge, after which point it’s time to turn around. So overall, there are 3 potential routes, which are all ~3km round trip from the hut. When we visited the hut, we were the only people visiting for just 1 night. Everyone else was staying for multiple nights to go ski touring, with the most popular route being to tour the whole way up the Asulkan Valley Trail, where there is a second ACC hut, the Asulkan Cabin. I hadn’t done enough research to be comfortable with this route at the time, so we played it safe. I talked to a few skiers that did the trail and I think with a bit more background, this would be a good option for me in the future.
In spite of the higher avalanche conditions, the weather was quite nice. It was overcast all day, but it also snowed all day, leaving a nice layer of fresh powder to ski. We seemed to be the only people to take the Great Glacier Trail on that day, so there was several cms of fresh snow, which was nice. We returned to the hut for supper and the atmosphere was much livelier as people rolled in from their day of exploring. There was a large group staying at the hut, which is often annoying, but I will credit this group with being really respectful of hut norms. They took care of most of the hut chores, chopping a ton of firewood, keeping the woodstoves going, and making sure there was always a steady rotation of drinking water available in the large pots. So Brandon and I had it quite easy!
There is a creek near the hut where you can get drinking water. I’m not sure if the creek is normally open year round, but it was when we visited, which made water supply a lot easier. It’s so much faster than having to melt snow and a much nicer quality for drinking as well. Overall, the Wheeler hut is pretty swanky and exceeded all my expectations. It’s a large hut and it did feel busy, but it was under capacity on the night we stayed there, with lots of empty beds.
You enter from the back of the hut and there’s a small room to take off your boots, followed by the first of 3 main rooms. The first room has a woodstove and a table, but I would consider it to primarily be the gear drying room. There’s a bunch of racks for boots and lots of places to hang gear. The middle room is a large kitchen and cooking area. You don’t need to bring a stove or fuel, as there are several propane burners. You also don’t need to bring any dishes or utensils. We opted to bring our own small pot because we were just cooking dehydrated food and the provided pots tend to be quite large, but we didn’t need any other kitchen equipment, aside from some camp suds and a hand towel.
The last room is the main eating and hang out room and has a large fireplace. This is where we spent the rest of the evening. The large group was at one table, and most of the other smaller groups were at the other table. We had a nice chat with 2 brothers who were visiting from Ontario in order to go touring, and a group of 3 from Calgary. They saw me teaching Brandon how to play crib and recognized a fellow card lover, so I ended up joining them for several rounds of cards. I’ve already forgotten the name of the game. I only planned to play a few rounds before going to bed, but got sucked in when I couldn’t win a single hand. I ended up losing spectacularly, but I had a great time!
In addition to the three rooms on the main floor, there are 3 rooms of bunks upstairs, so it’s a very large capacity hut. Sleeping mats are provided, but I opted to bring my thermarest anyways because my quilt and thermarest together weigh less than my full size sleeping bag (and I didn’t want to lay directly on the mats in my quilt). Brandon brought his thermarest too because he was concerned about being cold on the mats, but it’s plenty warm in the hut with 2 woodstoves, so that wasn’t a concern.
It’s a nice set-up for sleeping, but I didn’t get much sleep because as soon as everyone went to bed, the symphony of snores started. This is to be expected at a hut and I did have earplugs, but it was so loud even that couldn’t drown them out. In future I would probably bring earbuds so that I could put on some music, I think that would have been more effective.
We were up early because we had to ski out, drive to Field, and then ski 12km up to Lake O’Hara on the same day. We were the first people to get up and the fire had gone out completely, so we got it re-started and then had a quick breakfast before heading out again. It was a beautiful day and we saw lots of blue sky on our early morning hike out. One night at the hut did seem a bit short, but it was a good length for what we planned to do, especially since we arrived early on the first day. In any case, Elizabeth Parker Hut was the real highlight of our trip, so tune back in next week to learn about that hut!
I finally skied Revelstoke! This mountain has been on my bucket list for a long time. I’ve been doing an annual ski trip with my friends since 2016 and we had booked an awesome chalet in Revelstoke in 2021 that we ended up having to cancel. Because of the distance from Revelstoke to Vancouver, it’s been hard to find enough time to make the trip, but this year I was determined to finally ski it.
As a result, this was our 9th Annual Ski Trip, so I feel like we need to do something big for next year! To make the planning a bit easier, we didn’t rent a large chalet this time and just booked a series of hotel rooms. A few of us stayed at the Sandman Hotel because we were able to get a really good discount by booking early, and some others stayed at the Swiss Chalet Motel. The price of hotels has definitely gone up a lot in recent years, so it does require some advance planning.
Revelstoke is a well known resort in BC and much beloved by a lot of the locals. It seems to also have a pretty big reputation among Americans and international tourists, which surprises me because it’s not located next to any major airports. It’s ~6 hours if you’re coming from Vancouver, and ~5 hours if you’re coming from Calgary. But it is known for getting a lot of snow, and we were not disappointed in that regard.
Unlike a lot of other major ski resorts, Revelstoke doesn’t have much of a village. The town of Revelstoke is located right next to Revelstoke National Park, and while it’s only a 15 minute drive from the ski resort, there’s not a lot of accommodations at the base of the mountain. This is why we opted to stay in town, but this could change soon as there has been considerable construction of new condo buildings near the resort. That said, I didn’t mind staying in town because there are a lot more restaurant options (although it is still somewhat limited).
We visited over the family day weekend in mid-February, so we were expecting the mountain to be busy, but honestly, it wasn’t too bad. There were a lot of people, but it was not crowded like Whistler, or even Cypress. The bigger challenge was finding a restaurant to eat in, so I definitely recommend making advance reservations. We made reservations for Chesterfield on the first evening, and then waited in line to eat at the Village Idiot (they don’t take reservations), on the second evening. We also visited Monashee Distillery and Old School Eatery. Chesterfield had the best food, the Village Idiot had the best vibes, and the Distillery had the best drinks! Personally, we didn’t love Old School Eatery.
If you live in BC or ski a lot, you’ll probably know that a lot of the North American resorts struggled with snow in 2026. After a truly phenomenal December and early January, it was extremely warm and dry, with a lot of resorts having a shortfall of fresh powder. From what I understand, it was much worse in the US and some of their resorts didn’t even open. So we were a little concerned about what the ski conditions might be like, but fortunately the resort got 20cm of fresh snow just before we visited! The base of the mountain was still bare, but the skiing at the top was great.
Revelstoke has a reputation of being an advanced mountain. I can kind of see how it gets the reputation – there is a lot of steep terrain at the top of the mountain – but in my opinion, there’s still sufficient terrain for intermediate skiers. Aside from the gondola, there’s two main chairs; the Ripper Chair and the Stoke Chair. If there’s snow on the bottom half of the mountain, you could do a lot of beginner and intermediate skiing from the gondola, but when there’s not a lot of snow, you are limited to the other two chairs.
In my opinion, Ripper Chair is a great option for intermediate skiers. There’s lots of nice terrain next to the chair, including many blue and green runs. We spent a lot of our first day on the Ripper Chair and I had a great time. If that sounds boring to you, there’s also a lot of open gladed terrain that you can ski in this area, so it’s easy to find more challenging runs if you don’t want to do groomers.
Stoke Chair also has a few options for intermediate skiers, but tends more towards steeper terrain. I could see this chair not being very enjoyable without good conditions. The far east side of the mountain was icy when we visited, so we mostly avoided that area, but the west side of the chair still had lots of fresh powder, which in my opinion, reduces the difficulty of steep runs. I felt pretty comfortable on this part of the mountain because of the powder and ended up having a great time on both chairs. Plus there’s all kinds of fun hidden artwork around the mountain, so keep your eyes open because you’ll never know what you’ll find!
There’s lots of gladed areas that you can ski on Stoke chair too. I’m not very experienced with glade runs. They make me nervous if they’re too narrow and I’m not always sure where they will come out. So I could see how Revy might get a reputation about being challenging because of the number of glade runs. But many of them are located in the middle of the resort and pop out on other runs, so you don’t need to be too worried about going out of bounds, and you can usually exit early if you’ve had enough. My friend Victoria loves skiing glade runs, so on our second day, I did a lot of glade runs with her, which really helped to get my confidence up when skiing in the trees.
The real highlight of Revelstoke is the North Bowl At the top of Stoke Chair, there is the option to do a small bootpack further up the slope to access more terrain. Bootpacking is when you take your skis off and carry them in order to access terrain that isn’t skiable directly from the lift. I have done some bootpacking at Whistler, but it’s a fairly new concept to me. It sounds tiring, and it is, but we only had to walk for ~10 minutes in order to access the bowl at Revelstoke, and in my opinion, it was well worth it. In fact, we loved the bowl so much that we ended up hiking up there twice!
On our first attempt at the north bowl, Victoria thought we could access a run called Sweet Spot, which drops into the lower part of the bowl and bypasses the bootpacking. We gave it a try, but me and Brandon didn’t stay high enough on the traverse and ended up at the top of Vertigo Ridge instead. Victoria did manage to access the top of Sweet Spot via the traverse, so if you want to access this run, just stay as close to the rope as possible (which is located below the bootpack trail) until you get to the entrance.
We opted to just ski Vertigo Ridge instead. There are a few other runs that drop down the backside from the ridge, but it’s not part of the main bowl and it looked a bit steep for my tastes, so we ended up just skiing Vertigo Ridge the whole way down until you enter into some glades and eventually pop onto a main run. Vertigo Ridge was fantastic and even the glades I didn’t mind, but it is a long run, so I was happy when we finally left the trees. There’s no way to get down without going through the glades, so keep that in mind if you do any bootpacking or bowl skiing.
On our second attempt, we ended up just doing the bootpack, which is ~5-10 minutes of climbing uphill until you reach a little apex where you can put on your skis and traverse across to the main “Drop In”. The entrance is named after the first run down the bowl (Drop-In), but it’s really just an entrance to a traverse from where you can ski to any of the bowl runs indicated on the terrain map. There’s no formal runs back here, but you can ski across the bowl as far as you want and then drop in where you feel comfortable.
I was nervous about the drop in to the run, but I ended up being very comfortable with it. We thought that Sweet Spot was supposed to the easiest drop-in to the bowl, but I think it probably depends on the year and the conditions. The entrance to Sweet Spot was pretty narrow and steep, whereas the entrance to Drop-In was really just a narrow, but flat traverse. Steepness generally only intimidates me when the runs are narrow or icy. But because there was lots of powder in the bowl, which is obviously incredibly wide, I found it easy to drop into the bowl.
The thing about the bowl is that, once you drop in, you are committed to riding it the entire way down to the base of Ripper Chair. The main bowl funnels into one run called Big Woody, which involves a lot of glade skiing. I loved riding the bowl, it was honestly a dream, although we did spot a drop into a crevasse near the bottom, which was scary to see. But once you hit the bottom, you are committed to skiing out through the trees. I’m sure there are multiple routes you can take, but there’s definitely a natural path through the trees that most people seem to follow. I didn’t mind it at first, but the further we got, the busier it got (from more runs converging), and the more chewed up the snow was. The last section had a lot of exposed tree roots and rocks and a lot of the powder was brushed away. I managed okay, but I was really glad when we exited the trees.
But because we had so much fun in the bowl, we decided to go back for one last run to do Sweet Spot, which is on the far side of the main bowl and has an alternative exit that spits you out near the top of Ripper Chair instead of the bottom. We still used the Drop-In entrance, but then kept to the left side of the bowl so that we wouldn’t get forced back onto the Big Woody Run. I really like this section of the bowl too and we had some nice skiing until we hit the trees again.
Overall, there’s a lot less glades on this run and it’s much shorter, but it was also a lot more of a challenge for me. It was the steepest run of the day and because it was so steep, a lot of the powder had been brushed away and there weren’t a lot of choices for how to get down the run. It’s only a very short narrow section before you drop back into a wider run, but it was one of the scarier runs I’ve done. I relied almost entirely on a sideways slide to get down the steep section, which still worked for me, but I was definitely sweating! Victoria cheered me on from the bottom and Brandon cheered me on from the top and eventually I made it out to the wider part of the bowl. It was still very steep, but easier to actually ski. I felt very relieved when I got back to the groomed run.
I decided to call it a day after the second bowl run, so overall on my second day, I only skied 4 runs, but the runs were so long and involved that each one took the better part of an hour. I definitely felt accomplished by the end of the day. Brandon and Victoria decided to ski a few more runs without me. We had a bit of an incident on our first day. Originally there were 5 of us skiing, but we got separated almost immediately on the first run when Me and Kristine went one way, and Brandon, Victoria, and Tess went another way. There’s no service on the mountain, so Kristine and I skied the Ripper Chair all morning before learning that poor Tess had caught an edge on her first run and had to be stretchered out. Fortunately, she was okay and Seth came to pick her up at the base and take her to the hospital for some tests. But Brandon and Victoria lost a whole half day, so they were keen to make up time.
They didn’t take a lunch break on the first day, but I took a lunch break on both days. There’s really only one place on the mountain to eat, a small cafe at the top of the gondola. It pretty much only sells burgers and fries, but they are very delicious burgers! The problem is that the cafe is inadequately sized, so you will have to queue for a while (it moves fast), and more problematic, there’s almost no indoor seating. We ate outside at the picnic tables on both days. It was sunny when Kristine and I ate there on the first day, so it didn’t bother me to eat outside, but on the second day I found myself getting quite cold. There’s a small warming hut, so we crammed in there for 10 minutes after eating to warm up again. Since Revelstoke is growing a lot in popularity, I think it would be very advantageous to expand some of the on-mountain infrastructure. There are several warming huts, but in worse conditions, I would be concerned about staying warm and taking breaks on the mountain.
Overall, I enjoyed skiing Revelstoke a lot more than I expected. I was worried about the lack of snow throughout the season and that the mountain would be too advanced for me. I’m a nervous nelly when it comes to skiing, but I have been expanding my skills in recent years, especially since I took up backcountry skiing. I really enjoyed skiing groomers on the Ripper Chair with Kristine on the first day, and had an equally fun time skiing the back bowl with Victoria and Brandon on the second day.
I would love to return again in the future, but cost is definitely a concern. Skiing has always been expensive, but as more and more resorts fall under the ownership of big American conglomerates, it seems to have gotten prohibitively expensive. Shockingly, Whistler is actually one of the cheapest mountains I ski because I buy the 5-day edge card, which greatly reduces the cost per visit. I was shocked to learn that resorts like Revelstoke and Kicking Horse now cost $200 a day for a lift pass! Like any resort, the key is to buy your passes earlier rather than later.
We thought we were going to have to pay $200 a day to ski Revelstoke, but we did discover a local hack by using the Sunshine Super Card. It’s a ski card targeted around the Sunshine Village Resort in Banff, but it includes Revelstoke in its promotion. Basically, you buy the Sunshine Card for $120, which includes your first, fourth, and seventh days of skiing free (which includes Revelstoke). So basically, we got our first day for $120 instead of $200, and then all subsequent days are 20-25% off. So if you skied up to 7 days at participating resorts, you would get one day of skiing for $120, 2 free days, and 20-25% all remaining days. So overall it saved me ~$120. Despite the cost, I definitely recommend the resort and I’m so thrilled to finally cross it off my bucket list after 12 years in BC and 9 years of group ski trips! Where should I go for the big 10th anniversary trip?
The Road Goes Ever On 