I visited Revelstoke as part of a ski-drive tour of the Powder Highway in Canada. We stayed at: The fabulous Sutton Place Hotel at the ski base.
Revelstoke, or Revie as it’s known, is a serious ski mountain. For years, the snow-covered outdoors playground was only accessible helicopter or snow cat, which gave it a reputation as remote and gnarly.
Now it has four lifts and boasts the most vertical – 1712m – of any resort in North America. It is acclaimed as Canada’s newest resort, too.
This is a resort for people who like steeps and with more than 3000 acres of open bowls and glades thee is plenty to explore. It also has a good does of easier groomed slopes, too, for when your legs are tired or the steeps or you just want a nice ski in your comfort zone.
There are plans for expansion too, with more lifts and a much larger skiing terrain.
Revelstoke stats, pros and cons
Revelstoke stats
- Top: 2225m
- Base: 512m
- Drop: 1713m
- Area: 3,121 acres
- Number of runs: 69
- Beginner 10%
- Intermediate: 42.5%
- Expert: 47.5%
- Longest run: 15.2km The last Spike, green run
- 3 uplifts: gondola and 2 high speed quads
- 2 magic carpets
- Snow making: No snowmaking except in Turtle Creek beginner area at village base.
- Average annual snowfall: 15m
Pros of Revelstoke
- North America’s longest lift-accessed vertical (1,713m).
- Modern resort feel and in-resort hotels
- Good for intermediates and experts
- Tons of snow
- The First Tracks Programme is the perfect way to enjoy powder mornings
- First time visitors can hire a Private Tour Guide through the Inside Tracks programme for a tour of the mountain,
- Good balance of pisted and inbound back country
- Superb steeps
- Lift, cat and heli skiing from one village base
- Great tree skiing
- Sutton Place Hotel is fabulous with ski to the door, amazing rooms and facilities and very professional staff .
- Easy to “flirt with the boundaries” (skiing on soft snow at the edges of the groomers)
- Other winter activities, such as snowshoeing, dogsledding, paragliding and snowmobiling
Cons of Revelstoke
- There are only three lifts (although somehow this still allows you to reach all the mountain with a few traverses)
- Heli skiing is popular but expensive (cat skiing is more affordable)
- Keep an eye on lift closure times (we almost got caught out by a 3pm lift closure
- Probably not the place to head if you are a group of mixed abilities
- Not ideal for beginners
What we discovered at Revelstoke
- We enjoyed the drive through the Rockies to reach Revvie.
- We compared Revvie to Kicking Horse and while there are less steeps there are more gladed runs
- You can ski the whole mountain on piste or stay off-piste
- Trees have been thinned out her to make it more enjoyable to ski through them .
Surprising that three lifts (only) allows you to reach so much of the mountain resort - You can ski almost every inch of the resort and it feels like you are skiing forever on long runs, on piste and off-piste
- It is a small resort but we were here three days and apart from the big runs, we never felt as if we were repeating runs
- Nice atmosphere.