Racers pick their favourite ski runs
Adrenalin junkies Grandi, Read, Stangeland, share places that bring them joy
You don’t need to ski like a Crazy Canuck to conquer some of the best downhill terrain that Alberta has to offer. But just in case you want to follow in the tracks of some of Canada’s greatest speed demons, we’ve rounded up the best runs in the Rockies, according to some of Alberta’s top adrenalin junkies.
Thomas Grandi, who is a two-time Olympian and has the distinction of becoming the first Canadian male skier to win a World Cup technical race, loves the views at Mt. Norquay, which his family once co-owned, particularly the Lone Pine run on a powder day.
Just down the TransCanada Highway and still in Banff National Park, he’s in awe of the “semi-backcountry” access offered by Sunshine Village. Delirium Dive is gated and requires skiers and riders to carry avalanche transceivers, shovels, probes and to have at least one other person with them.
“It’s intimidating to get in there,” Grandi says. “But it doesn’t get skied as much and it keeps you on your toes.”
At Lake Louise, Grandi usually heads straight for the face of Grizzly Bowl under the Top of the World lift. And just west of Calgary in Kananaskis Country, he loves carving down Whoop Up, which was the men’s Olympic giant slalom run during the 1988 Games.
“It wasn’t an Olympic hill for nothing,” Grandi says.
Ken Read, one of the former members of the Crazy Canucks men’s alpine squad who competed in two Olympic Games and won five World Cups, also places Mt. Norquay at the top of his list. He has a stake in the resort, loves Giv’erGrandi, named af- ter Grandi, which he says has steep pitches and a great fall line.
But Read also spends time at Lake Louise’s steep Whitehorn Chutes on the back of the mountain and at Marmot Basin in Jasper National Park where he takes the 2,300-metre Canadian Rockies Express quad chair to the blue-rated Paradise run.
“It doesn’t get skied as much and
it keeps you on your toes.” THOMAS GRANDI OLYMPIC SKIER, ON ‘INTIMIDATING’ SKI HILL DELIRIUM DIVE
“I just like wide open cruising runs,” he says. “It allows you to ski the full vertical of Marmot Basin in long sweeping turns.”
Snowboarder and slope-style specialist Breanna Stangeland, who dreams of competing in the Olympics, heads to Sunshine’s Garbage Chutes right after snowfall to jump some of its “cool little cliffs” or zips over to the blue-rated rolls of Roller Coaster where “it’s fun to see how fast you can get through it.”
At Lake Louise, she’s happy to hit the rails and jumps in the terrain park. For big mountain experiences she’s fond of any of the back bowls, as well as Rock Garden, where it’s fun to navigate a boulder field, but only after a good snowfall.
Calgary’s Canada Olympic Park is the training ground for many current and future Olympians, in part because of its top-notch super-pipe, which is 165 metres long along an 18-degree slope and 15-metre walls.
“I’m not really into icy half-pipes; they scare me,” Stangeland says. “But when the weather is warm and the pipe is slushy, it’s so much fun.”
Michelle Brodeur, national snowboard cross racer and Olympic hopeful, grew up riding Sunshine Village and it remains her favourite with ev- erything from good groomer runs to backcountry access via Delirium Dive to the cliffs off Garbage Chutes.
“But that’s about as much as I can tell