WHEN SKI LIFTS RULED
Alberta’s ghost resorts
The curving lines laid down by skiers in fresh snow are evidence of a lot of things, including ability, fun and good timing. But unless you know where to look, there’s little evidence of southern Alberta’s once- bustling ski industry outside the Big Three at Banff. Where families clad in onepiece nylon suits once shushed down runs at Wintergreen, Turner Valley and Pigeon Mountain, hikers now benefit from the grassy slopes left in their wake. Most of the ski lifts, left abandoned and rusting for years, have been sold off and removed.
These ghost resorts are evidence of the post- war recreation boom, which saw ski hills sprout up in prairie gullies and ravines across the province. The sport got its start in Alberta about 1911, but it really took off in the late 1940s and ’ 50s, often aided by volunteers who cleared brush and raised funds. The facilities were basic, but they introduced an entire generation to the sport.
Over time, as money and snow disappeared, so did many of the little operations, and skiers moved on to higher elevations at Banff and Kananaskis. For some Calgarians, however, fond memories remain of the hills where they learned to ski.
by MICHELE JARVIE
Fortress Mountain
With loads of easy terrain, waist- deep powder in bowls and an iconic lodge with a massive circular fireplace in the centre, this Kananaskis hill, which opened in 1967 as Sunridge, was a skier’s dream. Calgary businessman David Bullock, who operated a helicopter geological exploration company with his brothers Evan and Curtis, was the major developer of the resort, which changed hands, and names, over the years.
Fortress, with 335 metres of vertical, was small but spread over three faces. It boasted one triple chair, two doubles, three T- bars, a beginners’ rope tow, and snow- making equipment. It also had an onhill hotel for those looking to seriously indulge in après- ski beverages rather than making the 130- km drive back to Calgary.
The most memorable part of the resort was the biting wind, especially on the backside chair lift. “Everyone remembers the big wall of dirt piled there to protect against the heavy winds and getting sandblasted at the top,” says Spear, who skied there occasionally when not patrolling. “A big anemometer was once blown off the building, and sometimes they had to shut the lift down.”
Fortress’s owner, Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, tried to get the Alberta government to allow more on- hill accommodations, which could have helped fund improvements and operations at the hill, but politicians were opposed to any more development in K- Country.
A decline in skiers coupled with escalating operating costs, including property taxes, insurance and energy costs, resulted in Fortress losing more than $ 1 million over two years. According to Neil Jackson, Fortress’s general manager at the time, that left them “unable to generate positive cash flow to make the necessary improvements ( needed) to continue operations.” It closed in April 2004.
The following September, Fortress was sold to Banff Rail Co., run by Zrinko Amerl. The ski hill opened for a few months in early 2006, but was ordered to stop selling season passes ahead of the 2006- 07 ski season. Then, in October 2007, the province pulled its leases, saying Banff Rail Co. had failed to fix an unsafe bridge on the only road in and had missed several lease payments.
Now, a new owner is making plans to reopen the resort. Fortress Mountain Holdings got a major boost when the big- budget Hollywood film Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, filmed there. The movie’s producers replaced the access bridge and improved the road. That allowed the group to begin a snowcat
operation in 2011- 2012— the first step in the plan to relaunch the ski resort, possibly by December 2017. A Whistler firm has been hired to oversee the development, which will include a new lodge and, eventually, new lifts.
Shaganappi
Bonded by a love of skiing and a desire to promote the sport, alpine enthusiasts including former Herald manager John Southam formed the Calgary Ski Club in 1935. It had a hand in initiating a number of ski events and facilities in Alberta, including Shaganappi and Bowness hills in Calgary. An earlier version of the club even helped create a 12- metre ski jump on the Bow River escarpment in Elbow Park in 1919.
In 1948, the CSC asked the city for permission to use slopes on the north side of the Municipal Golf Course, now known as Shaganappi. It proposed using the golf clubhouse as a change room, and even had a plan for flood lights for night skiing. Volunteers cleared brush, and in January 1949 the first runs were taken. It was used by the public and also for race training.
The city renewed permission the following winter and even allowed the club to install a rope tow, according to Alasdair Fergusson, a longtime member of the Calgary Ski Club. But the city’s parks department, opposed to the plan in the first place over fears winter use would ruin the course, shut the ski hill down by 1952.
Bowness had even more problems, including a perennial lack of snow. In discussing the future of the property, the Herald’s ski reporter Joy VanWagner wrote in 1957, “If I had $ 5 for every time I’ve written ‘ the ski lesson scheduled this Saturday has been cancelled owing to insufficient snow,’ I could go to Florida for a holiday.”
The hill operated sporadically throughout the 1950s, but closed by 1960. The Calgary Herald reported: “The CSC puts a great deal of effort into establishing a decent ski hill within the precincts of Calgary. The club was not in the end successful in its endeavour, but it was a noble effort none the less.”
Turner Valley
A number of small prairie ski hills in Alberta dating fromthe 1940s through the ’ 80s met the same fate. Lack of snow and escalating costs were a lethal combination for Darwell Ski Hill near Penhold and for other facilities at Nanton and Turner Valley.
Turner Valley got its start in the 1940s when some locals cut some runs on Cliff Vandergrift’s farm. A rope tow was built from old drilling pipe donated by the Royalite Oil Company. Axles were welded on and car wheels attached. The whole assemblage was powered by an old engine.
The hill didn’t have many vertical feet to offer but it more than made up for it with kamikaze runs. “Someone cut runs down these steep hills but they didn’t cut the stumps out. Skiing there was more like a survival situation,” says Spear, who first skied at Turner Valley in 1952.
One of the unique aspects of the low- budget hill was its “lodge”— a Calgary streetcar complete with a kitchen.
One of the Turner Valley Ski Club’s directors, Ozzie LaRue, who later started Ozzie’s Sports in south Calgary, eventually took over and moved the ski operations to a different hill in 1959, installing a Poma lift. That hill, too, fell victim to Calgary’s fickle climate— as well as vandals— and closed in 1964.
LaRue, along with Spear’s brother, was also heavily involved in the Calgary Ski Club’s efforts to set up and train ski patrols, including those at Turner Valley and Norquay.
Lake Eden Ski Resort
Lake Eden, near Stony Plain, operated as a summer resort until 1966, when it was purchased by Erwin and Will Zeiter. The brothers owned a construction company, which eventually grew into a development empire, and decided to turn the resort with its lakeside cabins into a year- round destination. They began by increasing a hill, only 25 metres high naturally, to 62 metres by piling up more than 28,000 cubic metres of dirt. Twelve thousand trees were then planted to landscape the runs. The ski resort did not survive, however. The Zeiter’s company went into receivership in 1983, though the summer beach resort continued to operate for some time after.
Pigeon Mountain
It was first named “Pic de Pigeons” by Eugene Bourgeau, a Frenchborn botanist, during the 1858 Palliser Expedition. In the mid- 1960s it opened for skiing with two Poma lifts. The Calgary Herald Ski School, in conjunction with the Calgary Ski Club, held free ski lessons here for 500 children every weekend for about three years, so it is remembered fondly by skiers of a certain age.
Rosy memories aside, the hill had problems. It was situated on a west- facing slope, which meant continual exposure to sun and chinook winds. ( The sunny upper slopes are a favoured feeding ground for bighorn sheep.) As a result, the hill operated only from
mid- January to mid- March, with poor conditions forcing its closure in 1968. It opened again briefly from 1979 until 1983, when it closed permanently. Although time and trees are slowly reclaiming the land, you can still just make out the old ski runs when driving east on the Trans- Canada Highway by Lac des Arcs.
Peter Spear worked as a ski patroller at Pigeon Mountain for two seasons before settling in at Lake Louise for 45 years. Equipment was rudimentary in those days, with injured skiers taken off the hill on old Parks Canada wooden toboggans. ( A chain attached to the bottom served as a break to slow the sled on steep inclines.) There was a first- aid hut at the bottom of the mountain but any major injury meant a trip back to Calgary in a make- do ambulance.
“It was long before there was an active EMS,” Spear says. “But there was a Rothmans salesman who would come up to the hill on weekends. He’d put the patients in the back of the company station wagon, and off he’d go, probably offering them a cigarette on the way. It was a public service.”
Spear agrees that poor conditions were a factor in the hill’s closure, but he also blames faulty snow- making equipment. “They had a massive electric generator to run it, but it was wired backwards and it blew out. It took out the entire Bow Valley power,” he recalls. “It was sent back and rewired but it blew again the next year. That was the true demise of Pigeon Mountain.”
Most of the ski lifts were scavenged for parts, some ending up at Canyon Ski Resort outside Red Deer. The old lodge remains, although Spear recalls that a forest fire threatened it at one point and it was sprayed with red fire retardant.
After the ski hill closed, Keith Hein, a Calgary businessman, leased
333 acres from the Alberta government and built Alpine Resort Haven on the lower slopes. It featured 44 two- bedroom timeshare chalets plus a swimming pool, hot tub and tennis courts. In 1998 Hein briefly considered reopening the hill as a venue if the Olympics returned in 2010. But he predicted that any major Pigeon development plan would spark environmental opposition because the area had been identified as a major breeding ground for bighorn sheep.
“I’m not opposed to the Olympics in any way, but I can’t see Pigeon Mountain being a big part of it,” he said in 1998.
Today, Pigeon Mountain is the site of some popular and challenging hiking trails, and is still the feeding ground of the aforementioned sheep.
Wintergreen
A small hill with about 190 metres vertical, this resort outside Bragg Creek opened in 1982 as Lyon Mountain Ski Hill, named for builder
Bob Lyon. It had four lifts and 11 runs of mostly easy and intermediate terrain, and its close proximity to Calgary brought many families out here on weekends.
The resort eventually sold to the Skiing Louise Group and then to Resorts of the Canadian Rockies ( RCR), which evaluated it and decided that, due to poor snow ( and the consequently short season), aging infrastructure and a lack of reinvestment potential, it would close the hill in 2003.
RCR continues to operate the adjacent Wintergreen Golf and Country Club, but over time most of the ski lifts have been removed and sold. The company has proposed a large housing development for the area with single- family homes, villas and a hotel.
There are no plans to resuscitate ski operations.
Happy Valley
Way back before Calgary spilled its guts, a leisure centre opened outside the city limits in the area east of what is now Valley Ridge. The city had about 300,000 people in 1959 when businessman Ernie Lutz bought up some land with the idea of creating an all- season family park— the Disneyland of Alberta, so to speak. Happy Valley opened in 1961 with playgrounds, trails, pony rides, stocked ponds, and barbecue and camping areas. It later expanded to include a 50- metre indoor swimming pool, go- carts, trampolines, minigolf and a par- 3 golf course.
Winter sports included skating and tobogganing, and a ski hill was added in 1962. A Poma lift serviced four runs and could shuttle 800 skiers an hour. Lights for night skiing were added and the hill also had state- of- the- art ( for the time) snow- making equipment.
A popular outing for Calgary families for several years, Happy Valley was sold in 1967 to an American group. Little money was invested in the upkeep of the park and it fell into disrepair. The owners tried to sell it to the city but the council rejected the notion, saying Happy Valley was too far from the city. It eventually sold in 1974 to another American group before a Calgarian named Bob Allen bought it for about $ 4 million in 1976. He ran it for a few years and added the 18hole Valley Ridge Golf Course.
Allen sold the land to a Los Angeles group that planned to create a Hollywood North complex, but it never came to fruition.