British Columbia’s provincial government has given the go-ahead for a new ski resort to be built which aims to have the biggest lift-served vertical in North America at over 2,000m, a direct ski lift from the local airport terminal to the ski resort and summer snow-sports lift-served vertical too.
With Revelstoke currently offering the continent’s biggest lift-served vertical, and Whistler Blackcomb the second biggest, it would mean BC would be home to the ski areas with the three biggest verticals in North America.
The masterplan for the new ski area, known as “Valemount Glaciers” and located west of Valemount in BC’s Premier Mountains, envisages 18 lifts including five gondolas, along with a resort base village, being built over the next two decades.
Valemount is located on the eastern side of BC, about 145km west of Jasper in Alberta and unlike other resort development projects, the local community and the first nations people whose land the ski area will be built on are reported to be largely in favour of the project, which gives “sightseeing” as an equal attraction to winter sports.
The ski area is proposed for an area with a great snowfall record, averaging 14m at 1,800m elevation – which would put it amongst the snowiest in the world. Another interesting element of the resort’s plans is a ski lift direct from the regional airport to the ski slopes, a kilometre away.
According to the construction schedule the resort aims to have built enough lifts and runs to be able to offer year-round skiing by 2020. The full planned vertical of 2,090m would not be achieved until phase three of the ski area’s construction schedule is completed when a lift up to 3,205m will be available.
If all goes smoothly over the next 15 months, the ski resort aims to open in autumn 2017 with five lifts operational including a gondola to the top of Mount Pierre Elliot Trudeau (2,640m).
