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The Whole Kit and Kootboodle: Take a Cat Ride to 7,000 Feet at the Iconic Island Lake Lodge

The Whole Kit and Kootboodle: Take a Cat Ride to 7,000 Feet at the Iconic Island Lake Lodge

Featured Image: Mark Gallup


If you’re a powder addict, chances are you’ve dreamt of cat skiing at Island Lake Lodge. Images of the storied outfitter’s ridiculously deep snow and blower powder dominated films and magazine covers in the 90s, convincing many-a-skier to quit their job and move to Fernie, British Columbia. A lucky handful, like Brenda Wright, scored guiding gigs and decades later, remain the soul of the operation.

“Once you see that snow, you can’t stop thinking about it,” she says. “And you’ll do anything to ski it.” Wright grew up in a small, snow-starved coastal town just north of Vancouver. She got her fix by snagging Warren Miller ski porn from the video rental shop her father owned. “I was obsessed,” she recalls. After college, she moved to Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies and lived in a friend’s closet so she could ski bell-to-bell. She got her first glimpse of Island Lake Lodge when a screening of Greg Stump’s seminal “P-Tex, Lies & Duct Tape” popped up in Lake Louise in 1995. “I can still remember the powder flying over people’s heads and thinking, ‘where is this place?,’ she says.


Within a year, she was at the lodge’s doorstep, deep in the Kootenay, begging for a job. With a lot of persistence, she landed the glamorous gig of scrubbing toilets. Happy to do whatever it took to be part of this skier’s Shangri-la, she accepted the job and got to work performing tasks from bedmaking and bartending to helping the chef prep meals and serving as a back-up tail guide. 

The Lizard Range is one of few places where terrain like this is cat accessible | Photo: Mark Gallup

Brenda is one of a handful of veteran guides who have devoted their lives to safely navigating guests through beautiful alpine bowls and perfectly-spaced trees at Island Lake Lodge. “You couldn’t manifest a more perfect piece of terrain,” she says. Now entering her 30th season, she says she still gets “the tinglies” when she sees the season’s first snow. Her colleague, renowned Fernie photographer Mark Gallup, is largely responsible for launching the mythical terrain into the mainstream imagination. The first senior photographer for Transworld Snowboarding, Gallup’s relationship with the lodge dates to 1992 when he proposed founder Dan MacDonald start hosting athletes and media. 

Gallup brought out freeskiing pioneer Scot Schmidt and late snowboarding icon Craig Kelly to sample the goods. The trio, along with snowboarders Jason Ford and Jake Blattner would eventually become lodge shareholders and pave the way for Island Lake’s reputation as a storied stomping ground for the world’s best riders. Suddenly Island Lake Lodge was the backdrop in films from major production companies like Warren Miller, Teton Gravity Research and Matchstick Productions.

“I was drawn to the aesthetics of the mountain,” says Gallup, who’s a key player in the photography program and also serves as a tail guide. “It’s a powder mecca with unreal alpine backdrops for photos.” While the acreage is relatively small compared to other operations’ tenures—5,000 skiable acres across 7,000 private acres of terrain—it packs a huge punch, says Niki LePlage, who is going into her twenty-second year at Island Lake. This is thanks in large part to strategically built roads that allow the cats to reach some crazy places.

Photo: Steve Kuijt

Photo: Mark Gallup

“Our terrain is slightly lower elevation compared to some other Western Canadian areas, but our peaks still have a dramatic, big mountain feel,” she says. The property also benefits from a unique microclimate that dumps unfathomable amounts of fluffy, light snow in the Lizard Range. And the lodge has curated one of the industry’s most experienced crews of snow safety whizzes to guide guests down near-vertical couloirs and through snorkel-worthy conditions.

Back in the day, longtime guide Steve Kuijt was the one leading pro athletes like Seth Morrison and Terje Håkonsen into the white room and down gnarly cliff faces. “From a guiding perspective, the place is very dynamic,” says Kuijt, who got his start driving cats at the lodge in 1990 and is now an ACMG-certified guide. “A good ski line is always changing. There are all types of avalanche hazards, massive limestone sinkholes and depressions. We’re constantly tracking wind speed, settlement, humidity.” That dynamic nature of the terrain is part of what keeps Kuijt returning each season. “You’d think after 30-plus years I’d have skied everything here,” he says. “But I’m still discovering lines no one has skied yet and that keeps me excited.”

No one knows the terrain more intimately than Brenda’s husband, Corrie Wright. The couple met while guiding at Island Lake Lodge and share an insatiable appetite for powder. Known by the team as “The Captain,” he’s been glading the terrain (a job Brenda refers to as powder skier habitat enhancement) for 27 of his 32 years here. He’s flattered that multiple guests have referred to Island Lake Lodge as the Augusta of tree skiing—a reference to the immaculate golf course. “As a skier and guide, I can’t imagine a greater privilege than to create these runs,” he says. Yet he almost seemed destined for the job. His parents gave him an atlas of the world’s greatest ski areas when he was a young boy. “I was always drawing ski runs on imaginary mountains,” he says.

Very few ski operations can say they create custom runs for guests but given Island Lake Lodge’s 90-percent return client rate, Corrie says he often has specific guests in mind when he’s designing them. That combination of repeat clients and long-time guides makes for a very special relationship. “We develop very beautiful friendships which allow us to know people’s abilities and expectations,” says Brenda. “I take it very personally, watch the forecast and toss and turn all night if it’s not what they want. At the end of the day, we all want to leave the world behind, disappear into the mountains and ski powder.”

Photo: Aaron Whitfield

Photo: Kirsten Madsen


TRAVEL TIPS

Getting There 

Glacier Park International Airport in Kalispell, Montana is an easy 2.5-hour from the lodge. Guests can also fly to Calgary International Airport (a 3.5-hour drive) or Cranbrook/Canadian Rockies International Airport (a 1.5-hour drive). If you don’t want to rent a car, Resort Tours, is the only fully compliant transportation provider for the cross-border route (from $899; resortours.ca).

Accommodations & Dining

Four beautifully appointed timber lodges are nestled off the grid, between the frozen lake and old-growth forest. Cedar and Tamarack Lodges each have eight rooms and Red Eagle Lodge has 10; all have ensuite bathrooms. Each lodge has its own outdoor sauna with views of the Lizard Range and the main spa offers a barrel sauna, massage therapy and a heated pool. Bear Lodge offers lounge seating, a pool table, foosball, darts, classic ski movies, a guitar collection and an iconic massive stone fireplace. A gear locker room and full gym are also availabe on the lower level. Enjoy a three-course, locally-sourced menu each night, with dishes like Fraser Valley duck dumplings and beef en croute, paired with wines from the 3,000-bottle cellar.

The Skiing 

5,000 acres of skiable terrain spread across 7,000 private acres of alpine bowls and tree skiing. The skiing starts as high as 7,000 feet. December is colder, with dry, low-density snow and great powder skiing but less access to all-terrain. January has similar conditions but more terrain access. February brings the most consistent temperatures and conditions. March delivers the biggest storms and warmer, longer days. Conditions can range from spring-like to serious pow.

STATS 

AVG. daily runs: 12

AVG. daily vertical: 12,000–15,000 ft

AVG. Annual Snowfall: 38-40 ft

GUESTS PER TOUR: 36 max

Booking

Two to Three Night Tours Starting At: $2,958

Book your trip today at islandlakelodge.com

This story originally appeared in FREESKIER Magazine Volume 27 Issue 2. Click here to subscribe to FREESKIER and have print copies (yes, real print magazines!) delivered right to your door.

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