One of the best teams in skiing tackles deep snow in BC
Part II – Words by Chris O’Connell
It dumped this season in Nelson. It snowed in November and didn’t stop until April. Nelson had mid-season snow conditions in early December, as usual. It seems to be this way all the time. “We are very lucky to be in a snow belt Retallack Lodge’s general manager, Phil Pinfold. “It seems to be powder all winter, every winter.”
Nelson is ranked the best small arts town in Canada, and that means there’s a bunch of hippies there. Hippies are cool. I like them because they are nice and they care about the environment and aren’t just jumping on the eco bullshit bandwagon. They genuinely give a shit. Hippies are even cooler ‘cause they like to party a lot and none of them work and they eat really healthy food. So the overall vibe of the town is pretty damn friendly.
But the best part is that Nelson is the coolest ski town ever and they don’t even know it. Within an hour in any direction of Nelson, there’s a snowcat and heli operation that day during the winter.
When most people think of BC, they think of Whistler. Whistler is sick. It’s big, there’s a lot of great backcountry, there are bars, chicks, good snowmobiling, great shopping and everything you could ever want from a city anywhere. The whole problem with that is the word “city.” Cities mean people. People and powder don’t mix. You would have a really hard time finding fresh tracks at Whistler at 2 p.m. on a powder day. At operations around Nelson, you could be skiing powder eight days after the last storm. So after a day around town, the team piled into the van and headed an hour and a half around the lake towards Kaslo and up the mountains to Retallack Lodge.
JANUARY 4 – 10 – RETALLACK LODGE
“We don’t need a warmup run,” Tanner states, much to the dismay of the entire group in the snowcat. “Let’s shoot this run.” It’s 7:30 a.m., and we’ve just finished a 45-minute cat ride to the top of Retallack Lodge’s 11,000 acres of pristine, mostly north facing terrain. Everyone would like nothing more than a warmup run to check out the snow conditions and get some freshies to start the day. It snowed another foot last night, the weather is greybird and not getting better, but Tanner wants to shoot. Actually, it’s incredible that the crew is even alive after last night’s private concert by the Scorpions cover band, Jermun. Derek Westerlund, a well known mountain bike cinematographer, found out the Oakley crew was going to be at Retallack and organized the concert. CP, the cinematographer for Tanner’s movie, is so hung over he swore he was hallucinating while trying to film. The crew complies with Tanner’s wishes; it is a job after all.
Tanner steps out a takeoff on a 30-foot step-down cliff and stomps the hell out of a cab 9 into a big open bowl. First tracks, first jump of the year, -15 degrees, after sitting in a snowcat for almost an hour. It’s times like these that make Tanner Hall a legend already. He’s got two weeks until the X Games halfpipe contest, and instead of training pipe every day, he’s switch 9ing cliffs into powder.
After that, the crew skied some sunny powder fluffiness down the steep sunny trees of Climax, a perfectly steep pitch that will leave you breathing heavy if you manage to ski it top to bottom. CP will later say that those powder turns were among the best film shots of the year, although he doesn’t remember shooting them.
“Hey ho, let’s go. Load ‘em up! Hey ho, load ‘em up!!” Karl Guderyan, Retallack’s snowcat driver and newly crowned mascot, claps and shouts every time the cat comes to the pick up zone. He’s more stoked than the kids are. His hoots can be heard from afar every time Tony or one of the team stomp a trick. “I have never seen anything like that, I am so stoked on those guys, they are all amazing! Such good people too!” Karl comments after seeing Tanner step up to a class five pillow line and make a line with serious consequences look easy. Karl is always smiling, always stoked, and there’s nothing more refreshing than to see that stoke at the end of the run. It’s people like Karl that keep the industry fresh.
Retallack is a totally self-sustaining “eco resort.” It creates its own hydro-electric power from a river, uses bio diesel in its snowcats, recycles everything, and all organic waste is given to a pig farmer. They possess a Four-Key Green Leaf Eco-Rating, which is not given out easily. Retallack averages over 40 feet of annual snowfall and they have 9,000 skiable acres, focusing on the expert skier, but with terrain for intermediates as well. The terrain at Retallack is dreamy. Almost every run is steep, long and well protected, so the snow stays fresh long after storms. There are gladed trees, tight trees, stump jumps, alpine, and some serious pillow lines. They have just about everything one would want to shred. With runs from 600 to 4,000 vertical feet, this green resort is a must- hit if you are touring the local snowcat operations.
