The slowest lifts you can imagine keep out the shoe clerks and crumb bums (thanks for that line Norman Chad), so they don’t ruin your powder stash. Simple. But are you patient enough? For me, I’m patient enough to hike, so a few extra minutes on a lift for powder turns days after a storm? You bet!

But really… In what backward world would you turn up at a ski resort, look at an infrastructure of slow fixed grip lifts and think, “yeah, this is perfect and there’s no way you’d want them to update these”?

I admit that I’m the first person to look at a ski resort and wonder how easy it would be to get around on their vast network of express detatchable lifts, or state of the art gondolas.

So that’s where this article might be a little controversial.

Not so long ago, the team from Snow Report TV decided to spend the second half of a season at the somewhat lesser known ski resort of Red Mountain.

Located in Southern British Columbia, near the town of Rossland and a stone’s throw from the American border, Red Mountain is easily my favorite (if not my absolute favorite) ski resort without a single express lift.

The Story

It was extremely cold when we flew into Spokane airport in northern Washington. Picked up by some friends of ours, we took the drive north to the Canadian border. It was late January and there wasn’t much traffic on the road in this part of the world. The border crossing seemed to be one man and his dog with no site of the hussle experienced at other major crossings closer to the big cities.

I can remember the eerie site of a frozen road which appears as though it was covered in dry ice as the small pieces of frozen snow swirl in intricate patterns across the road.

Once arriving at Red Mountain, we were stunned to find that for the same price as a one bedroom condo still located a good walking distance from lifts in most other major resorts, we had secured a massive stand alone house, with three bedrooms, a huge loft, open plan living and complete with a garage that had heated floors!

Oh, did I mention the fact that there was the obligatory outdoor hot tub, complete with ski-in access where literally someone had built a ramp to jump our back fence? Even if the snow was terrible, this would certainly be the best accomodation I have ever had at a ski resort.

I was also weary that Red Mountain would be a little isolated, however it really isn’t. The town of Rossland is located only a few minutes down the road and has access to almost everything you would need.

If you’re after a town with the major chain stores and a little more action, you simply head a little further down the hill to Trail, which most certainly had everything that we would require for this trip.

After settling into our accommodation, our first jaunt to the summit of the largest of the Mountains on offer Red, Granite Mountain, took almost 30 minutes in total for the two lift rides. No one in either line, they were just slower lifts than you’d expect at major resorts.

It wasn’t exactly the warmest of days either with temperatures well below freezing. Before I even made my first turn at the resort, I was wondering whether or not this was a good idea. I basically had to peel my backside off the chair lift as it was almost frozen solid when we reached the summit after what initially seemed an eternity. I had probably underestimated how cold it was on the left right up before making any turns – a rookie error.

But that’s where everything changed. The terrain at Red Mountain is simply extraordinary. The tree skiing at the resort, if not the best I’ve ever experienced, was pretty damn close. The trees are perfectly spaced and it just seems as though they get no traffic.

Once you understand how good the skiing is around the resort, you get to appreciate the length of the lift ride as it’s really required to refresh the legs before you charge once again. By the time we got used to the longer rides we appreciated how few people it allowed to explore the resort and no one ever got to the end of the day thinking they could have squeezed in more runs. We were all ready for a drink and a stint in the hot tub!

Where to now for Red?

There’s always talk of the resort owners plowing bucket loads of money to improve the infrastructure, or some cashed up foreign investor taking over the resort and turning it into the new Whistler, but when you speak with locals they all tell you that they love the resort just the way it is.

Again, it was hard to understand why at first. But when you think about the fact that we were riding a vast ski resort with only a handful of fixed grip lifts and literally just a few dozen others, why the heck would you want to share this with the world?

Peak hour at Red. Can you tell?

Locals would hate the fact that I’ve even written this article but they also realize that countless other similar articles have been written. People come and people go,  but it seems the secret still stays well kept and there’s always plenty of powder to go round, even days after a storm.

To put it in perspective, on that first trip of ours on the first day, I ventured onto a well marked tree run not far from the lift itself to find an open meadow which appeared as if only a single group of friends had skied through it. This is not unusual for Red Mountain, though certainly unusual for any ski resort given it was four days since the last snow storm!

Did I mention that due to its location, they receive some of the lightest and driest snow you can imagine? No? Well, it does. Plenty of it too! Oh… and they just opened up a third mountain you can ski as well… because you might have had to share a lift ride with someone before and Red REALLY don’t want you to run into anyone on the hill!

So the bottom line is that if you upgrade the lifts at Red Mountain, you might only get fresh tracks a day or two after snow instead of having the resort entirely for yourself all season long.

Have you been to Red Mountain in British Columbia, or had a similar experience somewhere else? Tell us about your experience and why you either love it or hate it. I can tell you now, that we will definitely be back no matter what they do with a lift infrastructure.