Our Terrain A Convergence of Perfection

Statistics don’t do it justice. Sure, 78 square kilometres (30 square miles) is big. Bigger than all of Vail and Whistler-Blackcomb combined. With only 24 skiers maximum per week, visitors to Selkirk Wilderness are guaranteed over 80,000 vertical feet of untracked bliss. But, like we just said, statistics don’t do it justice.

First, the snow. Meadow Creek is a convergence of all things deep and light. ‘The weather starts here,’ say wise Selkirk Wilderness Guides. Kootenay and Duncan Lake fuel westward storms as they bump up against the mighty Selkirk Mountains, strategically located right beside the even mightier Purcells. Throw in some of southern British Columbia’s largest glaciers to help chill it to perfection, and voila, 15 metres (50 feet) of snowfall a year. Minimal winds, an interior location that significantly dries out the snow ‘which falls on every aspect imaginable, we might add, from shaded bowls to sunny alpine slopes’ and you’ve got one of the most reliably deep snow zones in the world.

Throw it all down on a collection of terrain that is as varied as it is spectacular. The towering summit of Mt. Cooper stands guard over it all and the adrenaline can’t help but run full throttle. From short, steep, cliff riddled tree runs to 3,500 foot descents that start at a peak and dive down through open faces and into perfectly spaced glades, then towering cedar and hemlock trees older than Canada itself.

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