Is this going to be the best ski season ever?

Wow, Christmas rapidly came. As an Australian living in the Northern Hemisphere, firstly, its still a novelty to have the wintery Christmas lead up, with the Christmas lights experienced in the dark as they should be. However, you always have to make some decisions at least 6mths before about whether it will be a ‘return home, see family’ Christmas or a ‘go on holiday Christmas’. In my case this year, because I did the Christmas thing in Australia in November, I was able to do the latter, and you will see how thankful I am.

So, it was an easy decision to head to Canada, BC, to spend Christmas powder cat skiing at Chatter Creek. This operation sits right in the heart of the BC Powder Bowl in the Rockies. As I mentioned in my last blog, it’s been a whirlwind 3 months setting up my new venture, Total Heliski. When I designed Total Heliski, at first, I hadn’t planned to sell cat skiing. After all, my business was about heli skiing. But, I started meeting so many people who go cat skiing that I decided, there’s something in this. Greg, the owner of Great Canadian heli skiing suggested I work with Chatter Creek Cat Skiing. These guys, who by trade were loggers and snow lovers, are the goods he told me, and besides, their tenure (i.e. their land, which is all leased from the Canadian BC Government) is adjacent to Great Canadian, so they get the similar awesome snowpack that they do.

I arrived in Calgary, Alberta on Christmas day to a ‘white Christmas’. The drive up to their heli staging point near the town of Golden on the Trans Canada Highway (the highway that links Calgary to Vancouver), was amazing. Apart from the spectacular views of the Canadian Rockies from all angles, the amount of snow I could see compared to other years was getting me totally excited.

This was going to be epic. According to the Canadian weather authorities, this region had had the snowiest November ever. Lead guide from Great Canadian, Greg Golovach (GG) was quoted saying this is the best snowpack for safety and depth leading into Christmas that he had seen in 18 yrs. Yes 18 years. This was going round in my head as I was driving up to Chatter, and at the end of Day 1, Cat Skiing up here, let me tell you…he wasn’t wrong. Stay tuned for the next blog on Chatter…