Revelstoke: Canada’s Powder Highway Playground with Julie Hamel

Revelstoke Mountain

There are ski resorts that impress you for a weekend. Then there are mountains that completely reshape the way you think about skiing.

For longtime ski instructor and mountain professional Julie Hamel, Revelstoke Mountain Resort was exactly that kind of place. In this episode of the Where to Ski podcast, Julie shared how one late-season powder day at Revelstoke changed the trajectory of her ski career—and why, after nearly two decades on the mountain, she still talks about it with the excitement of someone discovering it for the first time.

From massive alpine bowls and endless tree skiing to one of the friendliest mountain towns in North America, Revelstoke has built a reputation as a dream destination for powder skiers. But as Julie explains, the real magic goes far beyond snowfall totals.

It’s the culture.The people.The adventure.And the feeling that every ski day could turn into something unforgettable.

The Powder Day That Changed Everything

Julie

Julie Hamel’s relationship with Revelstoke began the way many ski stories do: another skier insisting she needed to see this mountain for herself. At the time, Julie was teaching skiing at Lake Louise Ski Resort when one of her friends returned from Revelstoke completely obsessed. “He showed up after his day off and said, ‘You gotta go there.’”Eventually, at the end of the season, Julie and her father made the drive west. Revelstoke had only recently opened as a resort, and they arrived on the final operating day of the year.

What they found was wild.

“It was a knee-deep bluebird powder day. Nobody was there.” A local snow host named Bo took Julie and her father around the mountain, introducing them to Revelstoke’s terrain, culture, and scale. Back then, the resort had only a portion of the terrain open compared to today—but even that was enough to leave a lasting impression.

“Who gets a bluebird powder day with nobody on the mountain for an entire day?”

By the end of the trip, Julie already knew. “This is where to be.”

She left behind the business she had spent years building and moved to Revelstoke—a decision that ultimately became a nearly 20-year love affair with the mountain.

Getting to Revelstoke Is Part of the Adventure

One reason Revelstoke feels different is because it takes effort to reach.

Located deep in interior British Columbia, the mountain sits hours away from major cities and airports. Visitors typically arrive:

• About 2.5 hours from Kelowna Airport

• Roughly 5 hours from Calgary via stunning mountain roads through Rogers Pass and the Selkirks

Julie believes that remoteness actually helps preserve the spirit of the place. “The people who really want to make the trek show up—and that’s fine with us.” Driving into Revelstoke feels like entering another world. Massive peaks tower over the highway, avalanche paths slice down mountain faces, and snowbanks line the roads deep into winter. By the time you arrive, you already feel immersed in mountain culture.

The Biggest Vertical in North America

Revelstoke’s terrain statistics are staggering. The resort features:

• The highest lift-served vertical in North America

• Nearly 10-mile-long runs

• Massive alpine bowls

• Extensive glades and tree skiing

• Over 3,000 acres of skiable terrain

“Our longest run is 9.5 miles,” Julie explained. And unlike many modern mega-resorts, Revelstoke skis like one giant mountain rather than disconnected terrain pods.

One top-to-bottom lap here can feel like multiple runs elsewhere. “If your legs aren’t screaming by 2:30,” Julie joked, “you’ve probably been sitting around too much.”

Revelstoke Isn’t Just for Experts

Because Revelstoke appears constantly in feeds, films and powder edits, many skiers assume it’s only for elite skiers. Julie says that reputation misses a huge part of what makes the resort special. “There’s so much terrain to learn and progress on.” While Revelstoke certainly delivers for advanced skiers, the mountain also offers extensive intermediate terrain and progression zones. The terrain breakdown includes: 12% beginner; 43% intermediate and 45% advanced. That means confident intermediates can spend days:

• Skiing groomers

• Learning powder technique

• Exploring bowls

• Developing off-piste skills

• Building confidence in trees and steeper terrain

Julie especially loves helping skiers “level up” their abilities at Revelstoke because the mountain naturally encourages progression.

Powder Is a Lifestyle Here

In Revelstoke, snowstorms change everything. Julie described how local businesses around town practically shut down when major storms hit because everyone disappears to ski powder. “There are 10- to 20-centimeter rules for businesses,” she laughed. That powder obsession defines Revelstoke culture. Every morning skiers study: snow reports, avi control updates, grooming reports and bowl openings. The locals don’t simply pick runs. They hunt for the best snow on the mountain. “Hunting for that perfect snow makes me happy every time.”

Bowls, Trees, and Endless Exploration

Revelstoke’s terrain feels limitless because it constantly changes depending on weather, snowfall, visibility, and avalanche control work. Julie described the mountain perfectly:

“A run can be an entire bowl.” Some of Revelstoke’s legendary terrain includes:

• North Bowl

• Greeley Bowl

• Separate Reality

• Kill the Banker

• The Ripper terrain

And even after nearly 20 years skiing there, Julie says she’s still discovering new zones.

That’s part of what makes Revelstoke addictive. There’s always another line. Another stash. Another hidden section of trees

The Tree Skiing Is World-Class

Storm skiing at Revelstoke is legendary and it happens all the time. When visibility drops, skiers dive into the glades loaded with soft snow. Julie highlighted favorites like:

• Tally Ho

• Monkey Glades

• Still Life

• The forests surrounding the Ripper Chair

The resort has carefully thinned many glade areas, creating tree skiing that is playful rather than intimidating. On storm days, these zones become some of the best skiing on the mountain.

Local Knowledge Matters

One of Julie’s biggest recommendations for first-time visitors? Ski with someone who knows the mountain. Revelstoke is enormous, and understanding how terrain connects can dramatically improve the experience.

The resort offers Mountain Host tours that help guests learn navigation and mountain flow, but Julie says private instructors and guides unlock an entirely different experience.

“Our job is to go hunting for good snow and make sure people are having the best time possible.” A local guide can help visitors:

• Find hidden powder stashes

• Understand terrain flow

• Navigate traverses

• Pick the right zones for conditions

• Ski more efficiently

At Revelstoke, local knowledge matters.

Backcountry Access Is Legendary

Beyond the resort boundaries lies some of the most famous backcountry terrain in North America. The surrounding Selkirk Mountains are home to:

• Ski touring

• Heli skiing

• Cat skiing

• Avalanche education programs

But Julie emphasized that this terrain requires serious preparation. “As soon as you go out of bounds, you are officially in the backcountry.” Backcountry skiers should carry:

• Beacon

• Probe

• Shovel

• Avalanche training

• Communication plans

• Experienced partners

For visitors interested in learning safely, Revelstoke offers:

• Avalanche Skills Training (AST) courses

• ACMG-certified mountain guides

• Avalanche practice areas like Avalanche Ranch

Julie strongly encourages visitors to treat the backcountry terrain with respect. “It’s more than just finding great powder.”

Skiers Keep Coming Back

By the end of the interview, one thing became obvious: People don’t just visit Revelstoke. They become attached to it. The mountain’s combination of:

• Massive terrain

• Deep snow

• Friendly locals

• Adventure culture

• Constant discovery

creates a skiing experience that feels increasingly rare in modern resort skiing.

For Julie Hamel, one perfect powder day turned into a lifetime connection to the mountain. And for many skiers, Revelstoke has the exact same effect.

Episode Transcript

Thank you for joining us today. This is gonna be fun. You're very welcome, yeah. Your love for this place is just infectious. You know, you sent me your bio and I've got a chance to talk to you for a minute before we started recording this. And, you know, it just sounds like you totally fell in love with this place on your first trip.

Tell me about how you ended up there. So back then I was teaching at Lake Louise and one of my buddies showed up after his day off. He's like, you gotta go there.

And I finally, end of the season, my dad comes up from Ottawa and we had this tradition of he'll pick me up, we'll go ski for a couple of days and then we drove back home in Ottawa, right? But at this time I was like, all right dad, it's on the must list, it just opened up, we gotta go visit Revelstoke. And it was actually the last day of that season that it was open. So we did the trek, got there and it was like a knee deep bluebird powder day.

Nobody was there and we had some, back then there was some snow hosts. So it was a snow school, you know, guest service, everybody together, there was 10 people. And my now very good friend Bo shows up and she's like, follow me, you and your dad, I'm gonna show you what this place is all about.

And at that point we only had the upper part of the gondola as well as the stoke chair in the front and there was a little magic carpet for the mid mountain, right? So she just dragged me around and it was like, who gets a bluebird powder day with nobody on the, like nobody on the mountain for an entire day. And it was, I just fell in love, that's it. I looked at my dad, I sent out an email on the, after half a decade of building a business, you know, with my previous job of training and all these different things, I was like, yeah, we're gonna jump in on the ground floor here.

This is where to be. So yeah, I fell in love and my dad was like, yeah, I'm gonna be here every year. It's nice to be able to find your spot and just fall into it and sometimes you just know.

Oh yeah, yeah. When people get to Revelstoke, you know, town's about what, 10 minutes from the mountain, something like that. When you get to town, what's it like? What do you see when you drive in and after a couple hour drive from say Lake Louise or from, you know, it's a ways out there, but that's okay.

That's the point, you know, that way we leave anybody else who doesn't wanna make it, that's fine with us. You know, we're like, if only the ones who really wanna make the track show up and that's fine. We're about two and a half hours from the Kelowna airport, five hours from Calgary.

And then if you're coming in from Banff, you've gotta make it past Kicking Horse and Rogers Pass to make it in. So like I said, it's a little bit more, but just amazing. So you're gonna be coming in from the east, you go through Rogers Pass, from the west you're coming in, you're gonna have the Three Valley Gap.

So it's very mountainous driving coming in, stunning scenery. And then the town itself is beautiful, friendly. We're about 8,300 residents.

And then plus on top of that, you've got the seasonal workers and the travel tourism and all of that does come in. People are friendly, whether you like it or not. We're gonna be welcoming and, you know, like shy of the powder day craziness.

The rest of the time we're like, yeah, follow me, come on over. Yeah, you look like you're a little lost here. Let me show you where to go and kind of point in the right direction.

So it's surprisingly friendly. I had a friend who went there, I think it was about two years ago, maybe last year. And he said, you know, I got there too late to ski.

So I went to a bar, had a couple of beers. By the time I got out of the bar after a couple of beers, I had a handful of friends, I knew where to ski. I had people to ski with every day, I was by myself.

And he said, it was just awesome. It's the friendliest place I've ever been. Yeah, it really, it's stunning.

And it's not like, it extends generations and or you'll find somebody who's within your niche and kind of your style and you just kind of meet up with them. Yeah, lots and lots of good advice. There's, you know, the occasional, yeah, you know, there's a lot of joking and laughing and good times had for there for sure.

So everybody's there for the adventure for a good time. And that local knowledge, whether it's you've met somebody or, you know, you've been talking to somebody, you've seen different ski lines or people doing social media, that's one side. If you've got that and you wanna do the research, wonderful.

If you don't, there's a lot of, like there's hosts and guides and ski patrollers, people are there more than happy to talk. It's so easy to get lost, not lost, but it's, yeah, like a little, you go on an adventure and then you kind of figure out where you show up later on. So there's just so much adventure to be had.

And, you know, they say there's 75 runs, but a run can be like an entire bowl or an area. So it's, my goodness, statistically, what were they saying? They're like, we've got 31,121 acres of terrain to play in and tons of bowls and tree areas. It's such a playground.

Whatever your definition of skiing is, it's in there. Well, that is, that just sounds amazing. And it's served by not very, everything I've looked at about it, and this is one of the few places that I haven't been yet.

It's on the list, but everything I see about it is you got, well, you've got like four lifts. Well, four lifts, you've got so much terrain to work with. The mountain is amazing.

It's the biggest mountain in North America, the biggest vertical. Highest vertical in America, fourth in the world. Our longest run is 9.5 miles.

So, you know, that thing will go, that thing will take you as much time as you want. You know, if you're like a green or a blue and you want to do a top to bottom, by all means, have at her. The other ones that are like, I love taking my intro intermediates to back country guys, and we'll go for a greely bowl lap.

And that oftentimes just takes the whole afternoon. And it's so beautiful exploring back there. But that's okay, because you can hang out, you can stop, look around, see what you've got, and then figure out where you're gonna make your next turns.

Oh yeah, absolutely. A lot of the, a lot of Revelstoke, a lot of the swirl around Revelstoke has been around the advanced skiers. Going and saying, oh, it's the best powder.

It's the deepest powder. Look at you giggle. I love that.

But it, you know, it's sort of intimidating. And intimidating isn't really good for the intermediate or beginner skiers. And you started talking about that.

There's a lot there for those guys. Oh yeah, it is. It's great.

So whether, you know, true intermediate skier, or you're that hardcore family, and there's somebody that's new in the group, it's a great place to start to learn how to level up, like I said. So even if you do see the free ski world tour and the, you know, the big extreme stuff, there's always a way around, and there's great area to learn how to do this. There's wonderful snow school, you know, local guides and things that'll, you know, they'll help you along.

And like, we just, we want everybody to have the best time possible. So whether, you know, it's like, okay, we're learning how to ski bumps. We're learning how to ski powder.

We're upping our game with, you know, even with carving. It's great. I would say that the terrain, like the terrain, statistically, the way it's broken down is 12% beginners, 43% intermediate, and then 45% advanced terrain.

With that, considering this, there's just so much that you can learn and progress to, just because, you know, the 20-some year old is jumping off a cliff, or, you know, we're 40, we're dropping a chute. There's usually ways around to, you know, for the whole group to come in. Someone's got to take pictures and pick up skis and actually have fun out there as well.

It's, there's such a huge playground. It's great. So the ski company has been, has made a pretty big investment in facilities, and it's still sort of a work in progress still.

There's a lot of plans for that area. Has this made this a lot more accessible for a lot of the other skiers? You've seen a lot over the last, you've been there 20 years now. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, no, they, we just, well, not that we just, but there are most recent chairlifts or lifts operations is that we moved all of our ski, well, a large chunk of the snow school and the learning area to the top of the mountain. Revelstoke is known for, except for the, maybe the last quarter at the bottom, the rest is all natural snow. And the higher up you go, the more dependable and beautiful the consistency it is.

So we've got the cupcake chair area as well as the learning carpet that's going to be at the top of the gondola, which means that, you know, great snow, great grooming. You're close to the outpost, which is if you want to go for lunch or a snack, everything's there, but it's just such a consistent, beautiful terrain that's up there. And just on that little chair, like I, as a ski instructor, I can teach anybody from, I've never skied all the way to a 20 foot drop, you know, doing like intro to off piece and that stuff, just on that little piece.

So that it's just beautifully consistent with fantastic snow all the time up there. The other bonus is that because we're going to be at elevation at that point, at the bottom in the valley, we've got the river that's there. So oftentimes there's like that river of clouds that covers, you know, the town itself, but at the top it's, you know, either sunshine or we've got the serious clouds, but it's great up there.

So, you know, go get your vitamin D at the top and, you know, off we go. What about grooming? Are the, let's say the blues groomed and I assume they're just big wide open runs there. No, we, every morning I wake up, I've got this routine.

I'm a snow nerd, okay? So I will do everything I can to chase the best snow on the mountain, wherever it's, you know, wherever it's in the prime, that's where I'm going. So, I'm sorry, can you repeat that one? Grooming, grooming, grooming. Oh, grooming, right, right.

I was on a grooming, I'm still working on intermediates. We're going to get to the big boys stuff in a minute. So with the grooming, I'll wake up in the morning, I'll go to the Revelstoke website and do look at the grooming report.

There are, they're not going to groom everything that's called a run. And even if it's called a run, sometimes it's a treat area or it's a bowl or it's something but the grooming report will actually tell you what was groomed overnight and as well as what time. Okay, now you were talking about- Actually, middle part of the mountain is going to be your more intermediate type of terrain with consistent grooming.

So we're talking about skiing on the upper part of the gondola. Okay, okay. Yeah.

I love some of the naming and the trails there. What's that one that drops down into kill the banker that's like, it's like cupcake drops into kill. I think there's a run when I said cupcake drops into kill the banker.

So cupcakes actually are magic carpet. Sorry, no, the cupcake chair is that learning area I was talking about. Yep.

Yep, and then we've got big bed. But yeah, the kill the banker is, it's literally the run underneath the gondola. Primarily the upper part of the gondola.

It's been made famous, it's definitely challenging but between that run and so many other areas in the back, I'm a bigger fan of skiing the upper part of the mountain as well as the bowls and the ripper chair in the back. I'm happy doing an extra lap up there and then taking the gondola down. Like sometimes the gondola, if the grooming is great, it's not too busy, great, off we go and everybody makes it their way down.

But you know, hey, if the powder is still fresh up top or like, there's always a good reason to pick like Revelstoke, you pick and choose your snow, you pick and choose your weather and I kind of stick with that elevation. A lot of people love to do the top to bottom and they kind of check it off their list or they'll check kill the banker off their list. You know, I'm a little more princessy as far as picking my powder in my turns.

I just like the name. I think it's a great sense of humor up there. And it's under the lift, so it's like the show off.

I figure it's the show off run where people go to take their Instagram videos. It can be, but it's so much more fun to go drop a chute and jump a cliff in the back and the big powders in the bowls. Yeah, let's talk about that.

Let's get into some of the more advanced skiing on that hill. You can go up all over the place. You know, you've got North Bowl, I guess Greeley Bowl is what I've heard about.

And you can ski that place for a week and really not ski the same thing twice, really, depending on the snow. Yeah, 20 years there and there's still some places that I don't know very well. A little bit is I'm busy, but the other part is that it really... So in order to access those back bowls, what happens is that you have to take a walk, okay? The most challenging one would be from the top of the stope chair and then you would hike straight up.

It's about a 20 minute hike at elevation. It'll get you, my goodness, our maximum height inbounds is 7,300 feet. So it's not too prone to altitude sickness, but it's still a good hike at elevation.

On the other hand, you can also do a five minute diagonal walk across the hill on the landing line. And for a difference of maybe 20 turns, you end up in the same spots. So that's my go-to.

There's a couple of those things where you can either just easy walk across or ski across and you end up in those bowls. So it's a matter of strategy, a matter of whether what you wanna do and how far you wanna challenge yourself. Well, and 20, you know, doing a 15 or 20 minute walk isn't too bad across the hill, diagonally.

Going uphill, that takes some commitment. Yeah, it's your treadmaster full-on mode with your backpack. And I think the fastest I've seen some, like it was a ski patroller during a Helly Hansen competition years ago, and he made it, I wanna say around 10 minutes, but he was like one of those super tall athletic 20 year olds and I'm like, good on you.

Yeah, and he was probably running up the hill too. Oh yeah, yeah, it was a race for sure. Last time I was up there, you know, I brought some guests up and it was like, okay, well, let's go halfway.

We'll have some tea, a little bit of a snack, and then we'll go have lunch at the top. And it was one of those beautiful sunny days where you're just like, all right, you know, hey, let's go check it out. Go find a little snow to sit in, take a break, and then we'll finish up, that's perfect.

That's it. What is it like skiing those bowls up there? Is it a big drop in and then just wide open? It can be, but it doesn't have to. So the easiest, so separate reality is kind of like that first bowl, which is left hand, which is gonna be left hand side as you're going up the lift.

And that one, you don't even have to walk or anything. Everybody just kind of drops right in there. The next one's gonna be our lower north bowl.

That one, ski to meet the neighbors. It definitely gets tracked out a little bit more, but it's not a drop. You can side slip in any, but that's pretty straightforward.

We've got, my goodness, sweet spots a little bit more spicy. And then lemming line that gets you over to drop in, that one, same thing, super easy. Everybody, you just kind of walk diagonally, five minutes, you're there and you keep following.

And that upper lemming line will get you to, my goodness, upper north bowl, as well as grilly bowl. Okay. You must get really used to those long runs.

Those of us that don't ski every day on the biggest mountain in North America, we'll get there. You should go to plan your day out because one run there is equivalent to two or three runs most other places. If I'm pushing my day, I can maybe make 12 runs kind of thing, but generally speaking, it's, you know, handful in the morning, handful in the afternoon, around 2.33. If you're not, if your legs aren't screaming at you by the time you get to 2.33 o'clock, you've been sitting around too much or it's a choice.

Okay. How does the mountain ski during the day? Some mountains you ski with the sun so that you, or without the sun, depending on what the mountain is. But, you know, during some mountains, you'll start off in one area and then work your way across working with the sun or against it, something like that.

Does Revy ski like that? It's not so much the sun as it is snow and when the different areas open. We've got a wonderful avalanche control safety department. And if it does snow, anytime it does snow, expect that there are closures.

First thing in the morning on the website, it will tell you the approximate time of opening. So depending on how busy the crew is, if they're, you know, how many other things they have to attend to, they're going to be opening starting off with separate, excuse me, separate reality. And then we're talking about North Bowl and really may or may not open the day of a snowfall.

Sometimes it's the following day after. So if you're hoping to find that powder and everything, check out the website in the morning. It'll tell you, the snow report will tell you how much it snowed, when things are opening, what's groomed.

It just gives such great information. Also with, it'll tell you the weather, the elevation of that zero degrees. So that, oh, sorry, zero degrees in Canadian.

In American, I'm not sure. 32. So it'll tell you the elevation of your 32.

And that way, like you, it's a matter of hunting for the best snow on the mountain, not necessarily the best lines, but the best snow and what you want to deal with. Because we have such good snow, it's normal that we get clouds. That's where the snow comes from, right? So I do highly recommend that everybody has one of those low vis, like super low vis goggles, or use that.

And then if it's super cloudy, great, head into the trees. If it's not, head the bowls. There are the groomers as well.

So there's a lot of things, but hunting for that perfect snow, it's definitely, that's, I love that. That makes me happy every time. When they shut the mountain down for snow, if it's just dumping, can you still get at the trees? The trees are a lot easier.

Usually they're open and they'll shut down the open spots up above, but the trees will be open and they give you some depth perception. Yeah, absolutely. So we'll, on the front side, my goodness, there's like tree sections everywhere.

So, oh my goodness, not rollercoaster. Tally Ho is a great tree section. What else are gonna be? Still Life is great on the front side.

On the backside, we've got Monkey Glades and, oh my God, like either side of the Ripper Chair are fantastic glades. And they've gone through there, they've felled a bunch of trees and it's just beautiful. So yeah, the Ripper side is going to be north facing.

So it's a little bit lower in elevation, but definitely cooler. So you do get that fluffy snow for sure. And it also opens normally with the rest of the mountain first thing in the morning.

So you can go from the top of the gondola and straight over, well, through the Cupcake Chair, straight over to the backside. Amazing stuff back there. Or you can head over to the front where we're gonna have the Stoke Chair and you can ski a little bit higher up.

So depending on snow quality and crowds and stuff, you can kind of choose, plan your strategies that way. So you were talking about taking a tour and taking a guide. I think from what I read about the place, every day at 1230, they have a sort of a mountain guide thing at the top or at the top of the gondola.

And then past that, does it really help on your first day or two there to be able to get an instructor or a guide to run you around so that you can find some of the good spots? So the Mountain Host is a program that they, we've got some volunteers, lovely folks. They'll invite you, they'll show you, they can kind of point you in the right direction in the morning. Come the afternoon, what they do is that they show you the easiest way to navigate the mountain.

So from one lift to another, and the difference between your average intermediate group and your advanced is pretty much the speed of the tour. When it, and you also get to spend time with that local who can kind of talk to you about everything. So they'll point things out.

They're not, they've got their roles and responsibilities. So they do that very well. When it comes to really wanting to explore and find the stashes, the nooks, the crannies, all that good stuff.

Yeah, the instructor slash guides, like we are instructors, but when it comes to those private groups or there's a couple of different programs, our job is just to go hunting for good snow and make sure you guys are having the best time. It's a sweet job. It's not, it doesn't sound bad.

It doesn't sound like you're there to help people cut lift lines. There's like no lift lines. I would say on average day, no, but when the snow falls a lot, there's everybody gets excited and you've got the guys that are hunting the snow storms.

There are, you'll find that in town on snow days, there's a lot less business and work happening until about one o'clock in the afternoon. So we do, there are the occasional 10, 20 centimeter rules for some businesses, which is kind of great because everybody gets super excited and it's a little bit more local flavor on those mornings. And then in the afternoon, like the place just opens up and the rest of the bowls open up as the day goes by.

So, even if you didn't quite get that sweet, needy all by yourself powder in the morning, later on, it's coming. Do you need to take Abby? I love the fact, before I go there, I love the fact that town will close down based on the amount of snow. That's cool.

That's perfect. It's in a lot of people's word contrast clause. It's beautiful.

Do you need to take Abby equipment with you when you go outside there, go up to the ridges and into the bowls? If you're inbounds, you don't need to. And I would say that for safety precautions, maybe have an air tag, make sure that you've got to find your friends on home on your phone. That's always useful if things do happen, but there isn't necessarily cell reception everywhere.

So just make sure you ski in your group and just a lot tighter than the traditional resorts where I'll meet you at the bottom of the lift. You just wanna be a little bit tighter skiing as a group together. So that's one way.

If you do go out of bounds, so the resort boundaries are very, they're inspected daily and they make sure that everything's there. As long as you stay in bounds, we're there to help you for sure. Soon as you go out of bounds, you are officially in the good Lord, the back country.

We can, like a lot of people will talk about the, my goodness, back country, which is easily accessible off the top of the Stoke chair. Wonderful place. But at that point, you need to have your, you really need to have your AST course and your equipment and your gear and know about it.

Oh yeah, beacon probes, transceiver, plans. You need to have someone that you're checking in at the end of the day and like it really, things happen so fast and the sun goes down really early. So yeah, tons of professionals and search and rescue and great teams that do wonderful work and help people out.

But if you do decide to go back country, that's a whole other thing. And it's more than just, if we could push the ropes out, we would have pushed those ropes out. So just be, make sure that you're prepared and that you have experience.

If you don't and you do want to, there's a couple of options that are available. So we do have avalanche skills training courses that are offered through the resort and that should take you, exactly. So you're building that knowledge and like, you take a trip, why not take one of those? It's like you get, everybody's there once that's, it's a great way, great thing to do.

If you don't want to do, go do, spend the two, three days with the AST course, then you can also hire private ACMG guides, which is that same level of guide that you would hire to go touring in Rogers Pass or if you're going heli or cat skiing, it's that level because they're taking on the responsibility of you and the adventure that's happening out there. So it's a great, great adventure, great programs. These guys are extremely high in demand.

So if that's your plan, you got to contact the resort or like Selkirk or find your guide early in the season who's going to be able to take you out. So you got to plan ahead a little bit. The more, to show up last minute and to say you can hopefully find a guide or somebody to take you into that type of terrain is, you'd have to really be lucky.

Yeah, and Revy is a town has got, I think, what, two or three heli skiing operations and cat operations running out of it. So you could, if you don't want to ski on the mountain, you do have some choices there, but really work with one of the pros. Don't go off on your own.

That's just ridiculous. Tell me about Avalanche Ranch. Oh, Avalanche Ranch is just off of the Cupcake Chair and it's, you can go in with your probe transceiver, all your gear, and they've got some buried transceivers.

So you kind of go in, you flick one on and you practice. That's the thing with your AST course and going back country skiing is that if you don't use the gear and you don't practice, once you get into any situations, far and few of us like know exactly what to do. And whoever I'm going in the back country with, I have to build that relationship where I trust that if something happens to me, whether it's a broken binding or whatever, they're going to come and help me.

It's normal to ski maybe a couple of hundred feet distance between each other, but do I have the confidence that that person's going to hike up and powder and come and get me a couple of hundred feet and then vice versa? So it's more than just like, oh, there's great powder. I'm just going to, you really have to prepare yourself. And the Avalanche Ranch is one of those places that gets you to practice and build that trust with your partners and whoever you're going to go out with.

The Avalanche, the AST courses, they go in there all the time.