Best Canadian Ski Resorts on Categories

Best Canadian ski resorts on categories

Best for powder

Revelstoke, BCThis is the new kid on the Canadian block. Until 2007/08 it was a small hill for locals served by one short lift. But a gondola and two fast chairlifts have transformed it into a resort with the biggest vertical in North America and around 3000 acres of slopes, which get huge amounts of powder – around 12m a year on average. Its terrain is mostly ungroomed and steep. There are wonderful tree glades and a big open bowl accessed through a cliff band – you need to know the best ways in. The ski school offers half-and full-day Inside Tracks sessions, where they show you around the terrain – a must for any keen skier or snowboarder. There’s also a snowcat-skiing area right by the lift-served slopes, and heli-skiing can be booked at the base area. The first part of a new resort village at the foot of the slopes is now complete with a hotel (see below), separate restaurant, bar and coffee shop. You can also stay in unpretentious Revelstoke town, a five minute drive away, with a daytime bus service and a fair choice of restaurants and bars.

Best for charm

Silver Star, BCThe core of this cute village was built in the 1980s to resemble a 19th century mining village. It is based around a tiny traffic-free square lined with brightly-painted Victorian-era style buildings, wooden sidewalks and faux gas lights. One side of the village opens right on to the slopes. Equally brightly painted individual houses built in the same style are dotted around the slopes above. Nearby, there’s a nice little natural ice rink on a lake and a tubing hill. Nearly all accommodation is either ski-in/ski-out or less than 30 seconds walk to the snow.The slopes suit all standards, with a mixture of easy green runs, intermediate cruising on well-groomed trails plus a dense network of single- and double-black diamond runs plunging through the trees, many of them top-to-bottom mogul fields. The ski school has an excellent reputation.

Best for scenery

Lake Louise, ABLake Louise is spectacularly set in Banff National Park, with great views from the ski area of peaks and glaciers including Canada’s Matterhorn lookalike, Mount Assiniboine. The view from the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise hotel of the Victoria Glacier above the frozen Lake Louise itself, is simply stunning. The Lake Louise ski area offers runs to suit all standards, including lots of ideal intermediate terrain. There is no accommodation at the ski area, but it's only a couple of miles drive or bus ride away from Lake Louise village.There are two other ski areas nearer to Banff (a 45 minute drive away) worth exploring too – Sunshine Village and Mount Norquay, which both have intermediate cruising and steep options too. Having a car here is handy as the bus service from Lake Louise to the other two ski areas, though free if you have a tri-area lift pass, isn’t very regular – it only runs two days a week.

Best for beginners

Fernie, BCFernie has long had cult status among locals in the western canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia because of its abundant snowfalls (9m, on average) and the adventurous nature of its steep, ungroomed terrain, largely in the shelter of trees. This makes it a superb mountain for experts, so long as you know where you are going – a lot of the runs are difficult to find and involve long traverses. To get the most out of the terrain it’s best to get shown around early in your holiday – the resort offers two-day Steep and Deep Camps, costing from C$329. There are also great snowcat operations nearby; Island Lake Catskiing (islandlakecatskiing.com) and FWA's Powder Catskiing (tourismfernie.com). The resort village is convenient but small, with few options in terms of where to eat and drink – Fernie town, a couple of miles away, has a much better selection of bars and restaurants.

Sun Peaks, BCCanada is a long way to go to learn to ski or snowboard, but if you are going that far Sun Peaks is a great place to start. It has a friendly, attractive, recently-built small village made up of low-rise pastel-coloured buildings with a vaguely Tirolean feeling to them, and a short traffic-free main street. The ski area is made up of three peaks: Mount Morrisey, Sundance and the main one, Mount Tod. The nursery slopes are right by the village centre and lifts, and there are long easy green runs to progress to, including the 5 Mile top-to-bottom run on Mount Tod, which has a vertical of over 800m. The ski school runs half- or full-day Learn to Ski/Snowboard packages from C$65, which include equipment hire and lift pass as well as lessons.For the more experienced there's some good intermediate cruising on blue runs, easy groomed gladed tree runs, plus some seriously steep black runs. The slopes are being expanded by over 500 acres of challenging terrain for the 2014/15 season, and Sun Peaks now claims 4200 acres (the same as Lake Louise; the only Canadian resort with more terrain is Whistler).

Best for experts