Overview of Revelstoke as a ski destination

You can thank Lord Revelstoke for all the puns and the bumper stickers – “get Stoked”, “feel the Stoke”, and even “ride the Stoke chair”.

His Lordship arranged the finance to get the railway through here in the late 1800s and the town beneath the mighty Selkirk and Monashee mountain ranges in Canada’s British Columbia was named after him as a tribute.

A century or so on, Revelstoke has grown somewhat, and there are no signs of the peerage, for here you have all the attributes of a mountain town – full of youth and energy and shops and services dedicated to outdoor pursuits. In summer, it’ll be buzzing with hikers and mountain bikers and all sorts of water lovers on the lakes and the Columbia River that runs right alongside.

In winter, you’ll find skiers and snowboarders hopping aboard one of the dozen or so heli-skiing operations to get their thrills in the hills or making the short trip up the road to the Revelstoke Mountain Resort.

The Resort itself is a work in progress, as far as its base area goes – there are hotels and apartments established and under construction, cafes and bars for the hungry and thirsty, and excellent ski/board retail and rental outlets.

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But it’s the mountain itself that is the breathtaking component here – 1265 hectares of skiable terrain and a 1713-metre vertical descent. By any measure, they’re big numbers, and they’re part of the lure for skiers and snowboarders from all over.

Nat Segal, filmmaker, exceptional skier and summer hiking guide in these parts, was originally from Melbourne and grew up skiing at Mount Buller in Victoria, but now calls Revelstoke home.

She started out as a competitive mogul skier but then discovered freeride, a judged sport where skiers and boarders are given an area of the mountain, usually out of resort boundaries and ideally in fresh snow, to descend as skilfully and spectacularly as they can. Not unlike a surfing event.

“My first time skiing at Revelstoke Mountain Resort was in 2013 when I was competing on the Freeride World Tour. I just remember having my mind blown, like I’d never skied trees like that or found pillow lines [mounds of snow covering logs or rocks] like that in bounds”, Segal says.

She returned several times and used it as a location for the feature-length documentary she made with her sister Anna – Finding the Line. “So I had some connections through that and a few friends who had moved here, and I moved to Revelstoke in 2018”.

By now, she knows the mountain well. The main drag, as she calls it, is the gondola, with some long blue (intermediate-level) groomed runs “if it’s a little busier, I’ll just do laps on the gondola, just fast. It’s the best place to get your legs going because they’re such long runs. When my parents come to visit me and I do it with them, we have to stop all the time and I’m just like ‘oh come on you two, you haven’t done your training’.”

The Stoke Chair gives access to some of the mountain’s bigger bowls – North Bowl and Greely Bowl and if you don’t mind a hike you can head up to the sub-peak area below Mackenzie Peak. “There’s amazing access all through there. A lot of the areas off the Stoke Chair are ungroomed, off-piste. It’s the more challenging terrain, but they’re really fun runs and it’s a great place for stepping up into harder and harder terrain.”

Then there’s the Ripper Chair, lower in elevation but offering entertaining blue and green (easiest) groomed runs and if you want to head off those runs, “there’s some tree skiing that’s not too steep but still really fun and playful.

“Some people on a powder day will go straight to the Stoke Chair and other people go straight to the Ripper. It’s all to do with style. I like the steeper terrain, I like a little bit more open terrain, whereas I have friends that all they want to do is ski the trees.”

Another measure of the area relates to the company you’ll keep. Revelstoke has the highest concentration of Association of Canadian Mountain Guides members in the country (you’ll see the ACMG status with their signature). Many work as heli-ski or cat-ski guides and backcountry ski touring guides.

It also has a healthy community. “One of the reasons I moved to Revelstoke and I’m staying, is the community. I live in the downtown area, just a few blocks from the main street. And it feels so lovely – so much art and culture and some amazing nonprofits.

“If you stick around for a season you can be really involved in the town, but even if you’re just there for a visit, there’s always stuff going on. A classic is going to the Grizzlies [ice] hockey games. There are local kids playing and you have people who have lived there all their lives to people who have been for a week all cheering for the same team.”

“From my house downtown to the resort parking lot is seven minutes if I time it. And there are buses and shuttles, so if you’re staying at one or the other you can easily get between the two.

“You can stay at the resort and get that resort feeling, but then if you want to go downtown and have a walk around a cozy town, you can do that as well. There are lots of options for accommodation in the town and the resort.

“One thing I really appreciate is that there isn’t a divide, there are lots of residents living in the areas where tourists stay, but at the same time, the tourist accommodation isn’t crowding out the town, the town still has soul.”

Given its deep-in-the-mountains location, outside winter, Revelstoke still draws in the visitors and has plenty to entertain the locals.

That might be hiking or mountain biking, or spending time on the river or lakes. Those waterways are mountain-fed though.

“It’s funny, as someone who loves the water and grew up by the beach, it doesn’t replace the beach, but Canadian lakes are lovely in their own right. So there’s a whole experience out there. But the water is freezing!

“Later in the summer it does warm up, so at the end of September it’s just like March in southern Australia. But yeah, early season, you’re not staying in the water very long,” Segal says.

STAY + SKI Two choices in location and then many choices for accommodation. Stay at the resort base, at the likes of the Sutton Place Hotel (suttonplace.com rooms from $C469/$470 a night in winter), and you can wander out the door and straight on to the lifts. Stay in town, a few minutes’ from the skiing, and you get all the accommodation, cafes, bars and shops of Revelstoke township. The lift pass is part of the Ikon and Mountain Collective networks, which will suit some season pass holders from Mount Buller and Thredbo. See revelstokemountainresort.com

FLY + DRIVE Air New Zealand (airnewzealand.com.au) flies daily to Vancouver where there are onward connecting flights to Kelowna (about an hour in the air). Revelstoke is about a two-and-a-half hour drive from Kelowna, with hire cars and regular shuttle services available. A tip in winter is to come via Kelowna, rather than Calgary on the Alberta side, as snow is more likely to interrupt access if you’re coming in from Alberta.

The writer flew to Canada as a guest of Air New Zealand and visited Revelstoke as a guest of Destination British Columbia (supernaturalbc.com) and Revelstoke Mountain Resort.

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