Skier’s paradise
Midwinter road trip on Powder Highway reveals a huge variety of winter activities
Deep in the Kootenays, a helicopter dropped off me and nine other eager skiers on what seemed like the top of the world. A 360-degree vista of icy slopes dazzled my eyes, with blankets of pristine snow spilling from the mountain summit where I stood, skis in hand.
Jagged cliffs ran to every horizon, descending into the vast Columbia River valley in southeastern British Columbia.
I arrived at my high-altitude perch during a trip to the north end of the so-called Powder Highway, a massive loop of roads running about 1,300 kilometres through the Kootenays.
The highway delivers snowseeking visitors to myriad ski operators.
It serves more than 75 different skiing operations, including eight downhill ski resorts, 14 cross-country centres, 23 backcountry lodges, 18 heliski outfits and 14 “cat ski” companies that use motorized snow cats to transport schussers to deep powder.
This may be the world’s single greatest concentration of skirelated attractions.
I recently spent a week exploring the northern segment of the Powder Highway, discovering the benefits of a midwinter road trip, both on and off the slopes.
Cabin in the woods
The temperature had dipped to minus 29 C. It seemed like madness to leave my cozy cabin at Emerald Lake Lodge deep in Yoho National Park to snowshoe through the woods. But the sun was shining, and the outdoors beckoned, so I put on every piece of winter clothing I’d packed and ventured outside.
The historic lodge was built in 1902 by the Canadian Pacific Railway and remains popular even in the depths of winter. I could only imagine the emerald lake colours as I clomped along its frozen surface, gazing in wonder at the iceencased trees, towering mountains and steaming rivers.
Some visitors glided by on cross-country skis, others “skinned” up nearby hills on backcountry skis, and still more simply strolled along the shores. Nobody seemed to mind the cold amid the stunning scenery.
I returned to the lodge for a welldeserved hot toddy and a hearty bison filet dinner before retiring to the billiards room for a scotch by the roaring fire. I felt like a retired Viking at my Arctic estate and slept beneath piled blankets in front of glowing coals, dreaming of northern treasures.
Macaroni and cheese is big along the Powder Highway. Not the Kraft boxed version. I’m talking about delicious, rib-sticking, creative hot pots of cheesy goodness offered with surprising regularity along the roads.
At Truffle Pigs Bistro in the town of Field, on an outer spoke of the highway, customers drive for hours from Calgary for the mac and cheese. Mine was baked with pork, Gruyere and aged cheddar in bechamel sauce, topped with chicken apple sausage and delivered in an iron caldron.
Other roadside meals included massive buffalo steaks, tenderly braised elk medallions, duck and venison pasta and fresh B.C. salmon.
I washed it all down with locally brewed beer, Canadian whiskey infused with maple syrup, and the popular Caesar cocktail made with Clamato juice.
A highlight of any good road trip are the oddball discoveries along the way. I stopped at Rogers Pass to check out the copper-coloured Breeches of Miss Conduct sculpture, a tribute to female mountaineer Georgia Engelhard, who summited countless area peaks in the early 20th century wearing — gasp — pants instead of the “proper” heavy skirts. Also impressive was the World’s Largest Paddle near Golden. At 61 feet long, the oversize oar seems appropriately scaled for a row through the surrounding scenery.
Every visitor should take a dip in one of the half-dozen hot springs near the Powder Highway. The most famous of them, Radium Hot Springs in Kootenay National Park, has been a popular destination since the 1920s. It has the added bonus of being near an endearingly kitschy town of the same name.
There’s a nominal fee to soak in the Radium pools, but because of Canada’s sesquicentennial this year, access to Kootenay — and all of the country’s national parks — is free with a Discovery Pass.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban is on hold, but the confusion and uncertainty sparked by the order might have already inflicted pain on the travel industry.
A study of about 300 million online air travel searches found that flight searches from international origins to the U.S. dropped 17 per cent since Trump took office and signed an executive order Jan. 27, banning travel from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia.
The study by the market research firm Hopper compared numbers from the final two weeks of the Obama administration with the first two weeks of the Trump administration.
Flight searches dropped in 94 of 122 countries in the study, with the notable exception of Russia, where flight searches to the U.S. rose 88 per cent in that period.
To see if other factors played a role in the drop, Hopper compared flight searches for the same four weeks last year and found searches declined only 1.8 per cent between the two comparable two-week periods, said Patrick Surry, chief data scientist for Hopper.
“It’s hard to see any other short-term significant events that could be related” to the drop, he said.
Business travel bookings in the U.S. fell 3.4 per cent in the week after the travel ban was enacted compared with the previous week, according to the Global Business Travel Association, the trade group for the world’s travel managers.
The group estimates that the drop amounted to a $185-million loss in business travel bookings. Like Hopper, GBTA studied the booking data for the same time last year and found no significant drop.