Banff’s five year best

21st February 2011, by Chris Gill

Lake Louise last week

So, Canada ‘took’ all our January snow, eh? Regular snowfall across the pond continues to produce terrific conditions in western Canada, giving Banff its best January for five years.

The resort has announced almost half a metre of new snow in the past week, along with the 170cm accumulated throughout last month – well above the 30-year average they claim.

Conditions at the moment in all three Banff resorts are reported to be excellent, with blue skies between the storms and perfect pistes. It has remained fairly cold too. Mount Norquay has the deepest snow base at present: 206cm.

It’s forecast to warm up a bit this week, but that shouldn’t pose too many problems to the great skiing and boarding on offer out there now. And it was certainly looking neat for the recent Canadian Powder 8 Championships, held at Lake Louise, where teams of two carve their way down the resort’s steeps – creating 8s in the untracked powder for a chance to win prizes.

Next week’s event is the Mountain Smoker: how many runs could you complete in three hours flat out? The current record was set by Bob Rakin in 1981 of 23 runs of Lone Pine – over 30,000 vertical feet in the time.

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