Situated on British Columbia’s Powder Highway, in the town of Rossland, RED Mountain Resort is Western Canada’s oldest ski resort. Boasting 2,919 feet of vertical and an abundance of annual powder, RED has a reputation as one of BC’s best shred spots. In August of this year, RED began development of its most significant expansion to date: Grey Mountain.
A two-year project, the expansion will add nearly 1,000 acres, including a new mountain, to RED’s current acreage count: 1,685. “The scale of this expansion is a true game-changer for RED Mountain Resort and for the community of Rossland,” said Howard Katkov, President and CEO of Red Mountain Resort. “The management team has spent the last eight years carefully reinforcing the company’s infrastructure, investing 50 million dollars in the facilities and completing world class slope-side accommodations. Now we’re truly ready for prime-time. We’ve consciously kept a low profile while we diligently readied ourselves for this massive expansion.”
Grey offers what the resort refers to as “3-D skiing.” Grey, just like Granite—RED’s other peak—is cone-shaped, allowing for 360-degree skiing off the summit.
RED Mountain Expansion Video
Chris Cushing, Principal at Snow Engineering (SE) Group, one of the ski resort industry’s premier design and engineering firms, says, “ This project is one of the most dramatic transformations of an existing major ski area that we’ve seen and it is one of the largest, if not the largest, single-season ski area expansion projects in North America in several decades.” RED states in an official press release, “The 997-acre expansion on Grey alone is about the same size as the revered Mt. Baker Ski Area in Washington. To put this in perspective, total acreage with our new terrain on Grey makes RED larger than Jackson Hole, Wyoming. With the new zone, RED is elevated to the top three-percent of all resorts in North America for skiable acres (2,682), while keeping its independent soul and escaping the stuffy trappings of many of the ‘mega resorts.'”
For the upcoming 2012/13 season, RED will shuttle skiers to Grey’s summit in groups of nine via an Alpine Sherpa, an “an oversized snowmobile-bus.” A Poma Quad Chair is scheduled to be installed next summer.
Grey Mountain. Kalacis Photo.
“We see the Grey expansion as an expression of our commitment to the next generation of skiers and snowboarders, as well as to our current fans,” explains Fran Richards, Vice President, Marketing. “We share their values when it comes to mountain recreation and feel a deep responsibility to protect the wonderful ski experience at RED. We truly see RED as an endangered species, one of the last resorts that celebrates the true skiing experience: offering wide open terrain and all the amenities one expects, without the rampant commercialism that has significantly changed the face of the ski experience throughout North America. Many recreational skiers and snowboarders have never experienced a pure world like RED and we’d like to show them that the other side is, in fact, better.”
A trip up (or down) the famed Powder Highway should be on every skier’s to-do list. While RED has always been a must-visit destination along the way, this latest venture lends further incentive for skiers to explore the vintage BC hot spot.
