Revelstoke, USA

Patrick Thorne was wary about the hype surrounding this latest addition to the super league of North American destinations but was quickly won over by the authentic charm of the existing town and the sheer gob-smacking quality of the skiing…

I’d read a lot of the hype about Revelstoke and had found it rather off-putting. A great PR campaign meant that ‘the only ski resort to offer lift-served, snowcat and heli-skiing,’ as well as ‘the biggest lift-served vertical drop in North America by its second season’, was being covered in every ski publication, everywhere. It was the same kind of blanket coverage that the ET movie had received, and I still haven’t got round to seeing that. So I decided to let the dust settle. All the ‘first-adopters’ were out there with their shiny new skis and iPhones for opening day on Revelstoke’s first winter, 2007-8. I arrived 15 months later, last Easter, by which time that ‘biggest vertical in North America,’ all 1,713m of it (which puts it inside the world top 50) was fully open to enjoy.

By the end of its second season, Revelstoke had gone from being a purveyor of impressive statistics to somewhere people have tried and liked – a lot! The recently published poll of the US’s Skiing magazine’s 1.2 million readership had Revelstoke rocket into the ‘best resort’ chart at Number 5 (remember there are 800 or so ski areas in North America), behind the usual candidates (Whistler Blackcomb, Jackson Hole, Vail and Snowbird). Which, when you consider Revelstoke is only two years old and that only a tiny percentage of Skiing’s readership could have visited the resort compared with the big names, points to how many have been impressed.

But the first thing you will notice about the resort is that it’s a long way from anywhere. Bad news if you’re in a hurry, and something to consider if you’ve just arrived in Calgary (413km away) or Vancouver (6,231km away) on a transatlantic flight; an overnight stop en route may well be in order. But good news if you like unspoilt resort towns.

In all the excitement about Revelstoke’s ski area I’d completely missed the fact that it had been built above a long-standing town full of quirky architecture and great atmospheric bars, shops and restaurants, even an excellent swimming pool complex. Revelstoke is full of friendly locals who live there year-round. This is like Crested Butte, Steamboat or Telluride in Colorado – probably because they’re also distant from a major hub. It is also like Aspen or Park City used to be, before their proximity to easy air access led to what some might consider ‘over development’.

The City of Revelstoke (population 7,500) was established in the 1880s when the trans-Canadian railway, responsible for so many of the country’s most famous resorts, came through. Originally a mining settlement, tourism took off in the 1960s when the trans-Canadian road followed the rail access. But, although Revelstoke Mountain Resort may only be entering its third season this winter, skiing has been practised here for the best part of a century. Ski jumping is the discipline for which the town is particularly famous, with the first contest held here in 1915. The Canadian record was broken a year later in the resort, and the world title won by local
man Nels Nelsen in 1925, after whom the ski jump is now named.

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