Go To:
SkiBC.com if you want some good information on ski resorts in B.C. As you can see, there are SOO many more resorts than whistler. Sure they're not the massive resorts like Whis... but it's cheaper, less crowded, and you'll find much less tourists getting in your way.
Look at Apex, Big White, Fernie, Kicking Horse, Panorama, Powder King, Red Mountain,
Shames Mountain, and Sun Peaks.
I put Shames Mountain in bold because it's where I ski. We have a pretty sick park (tables, hips, lots of rails), and incredible backcountry. If you rent equipment from Azad Adventures in town, you get a backpack, beacon, and probe for $5 Canadian per day, and you can rent pow skis (motherships, kahunas, pistols, and black diamond skis) with touring bindings and skins for pretty cheap too.
Seriously dude... come to Shames. Keep an eye on my site in the next little while for when I post the teaser to our video 'Three Day Weekend', it shows some of the places to build backcountry kickers. There's actually a place for a 120 footer. A couple guys actually take the jump to the 120 foot gap, but my friend hit it as about a 60 foot stepdown (landed on his back, you'll see it in the teaser). The backcountry is easily accessible, if you come up with me & my friends there's a regularly packed skin trail to the very top of the mountain where you can take a couple of different routes that start out in wide open pow (occasionally windblown) and drop down into the trees which takes you into a series of gullys and in the end you ski down into one main gully where you can ski out and back inbounds.
It's fairly far north in BC, but we've got an airport, bus that takes you up to the hill for $3 can per way, and a good deal of hotels/motels to stay in. Small town (13,000 people) but we've got a lot of good stuff. The ski hill is about 30 mins to an hour away depending on the road conditions, and uh, Yeah, it's sick. Rated #2 in CANADA for powder skiing by Ski Canada or something. (#1 was Powder King, about 6 hours away from here).
If you want my opinion, come to the north. Ski at Powder King a couple times, then come up to Shames (Terrace, B.C.) for the last couple days.
Check the Shames Mountain site at
ShamesMountain.com
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