“You look over into the bowl and you get a little bit of that scared, nervous feeling. That fear and adrenaline is always good before you drop into a gnarly line.”
Those were the words of Jenna Norris from Spokane describing one of the challenging runs she skied at Big Red Cats. Jenna is a diehard skier, and she can usually be found December through March shredding powder in the backcountry around her local mountains of North Idaho and British Columbia. On this particular trip, Jenna and a group of ski friends joined me on a powder cat skiing trip in late March to Big Red Cats in Rossland, B.C..
With its close proximity, only a short three-hour drive from the Spokane/Coeur d’Alene area, and its ability to cater to many levels of riding, Big Red Cats was the perfect choice for my longtime ski friend Tommy Frey to treat his teenage son JJ to a cat skiing adventure as a high school graduation gift.
“I’ve been waiting to go on a cat trip forever, and when I got that call from my dad, I was speechless,” JJ said. “I started counting down the days, the minutes, the hours to go on the trip.”
» BIGGEST IN THE WORLD
Big Red Cats’ home base is located at the foot of the Red Mountain Resort, and it operates in British Columbia’s Selkirk Mountain range, which is world-renowned for its legendary powder. Owners Kieren and Paula Gaul have been operating the business for more than 14 years and have grown it into one of the largest cat skiing operations in the world. With six snowcats and a snowcat road network that exceeds 135 miles, accessing the goods across the 20,000-acre terrain is pretty easy.
There are eight main mountains and 47 different drainages that cater to a variety of riding levels, from intermediate wide-open slopes to steep and deep for the expert.
The custom designed snowcats are comfortable, and the rides back up to the top of the mountain are short, giving you just enough time to rest your legs and refuel your body with one of the many tasty snacks Big Red Cats has stocked in lunch boxes. Keeping refueled and hydrated throughout the day is key for those leg-crushing days.
During the busy season, Big Red Cats runs up to five snowcats per day. Cats are separated on ability levels, so you ride with people of the same caliber and don’t get performance anxiety. The classifications are intermediate, advanced and expert. If you like charging hard and sending it, there’s the uber expert group.
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» SETTING OUT
The typical day at Big Red Cats starts like this:
Meet at the office at the base of Red Mountain to sign waivers and get issued the snow safety equipment provided to each guest: An avalanche transceiver and a backpack loaded with a shovel and probe.
After the paperwork, the groups are whisked away to the staging area, which is a quick drive up the valley where you’ll go through a short training session on how to properly use your avalanche transceiver, review emergency backcountry situations and talk about the hazards that are in the snow-covered mountains.
Jenna was impressed with the safety talk.
“I thought the transceiver training was really good,” she says. “The best part was Kieran and the other guides explaining the process to us, but they were also having us use our transceivers and practice digging. That was really important.”
Once your snow-safety training is completed, which is typically around 9 a.m., you and the other groups load into your designated snowcat. From there, it’s a 40-minute ride to the first drop-off point. Once you’re up in the higher riding zones, most cat rides are short, anywhere from 5-20 minutes. Most of the ski runs on average are about 1,400 vertical feet of mind-blowing powder, and it’s not uncommon to get in 10 to 13 runs per day.
Our cat was filled with a fun group of avid riders from the Spokane/North Idaho area who spend a lot of time riding together. You have to have a tough skin to hang with this group as they like rib each other all day long.
Our first drop off was a gladed tree area with plenty of wide-open spaces, allowing our guide Kieren to assess the level of riders in our group. We gave the newbie JJ the honors of first tracks. JJ pushed off and made it halfway down through the glades and started hooting and hollering the rest of the way down. One by one, the rest of the group skied to JJ and Kieren. When I skied into the group JJ was all smiles and full of confidence, which was a nice change from the day before.
“I was nervous,” he recalled. “I was really worried about not being able to ski powder and avalanches. After the first run, that was all behind me.”
On our second run, Kieren took us to a zone that was a little steeper and had some features on it (rocks and jumps). We made it halfway down the run and Kieren pulled us over to the side and pointed to an alleyway between the trees and asked us if anyone wanted to ski a fun pillow line. For the non-skiers, pillow lines are a series of bumps that are typically snow-covered rocks or stumps in a varying sequence. In other words, it’s like jumping on a bucking bronco at the rodeo. Hang on tight!
Super stoked and having watched dozens of ski movies where the pros slay the pillow lines in dramatic fashion, JJ was more than eager to go for his first rodeo ride.
“I remember Kieren saying there’s a bunch of pillows below (and if) anybody wanted to go down,” JJ said.
“I’d never skied pillows before and I said, ‘I’ll take it.’ The first pillow I go off, I double ejected on the landing and buried my head in the snow. When I popped my head up, I see everybody laughing at me. It was pretty funny. I crashed but who cares.”
For the rest of the day, our group covered some ground and skied all kinds of terrain from wide-open steep bowls to a couple of runs loaded with plenty of terrain features allowing us to get some air and test gravity. By the end of the first day, I don’t know which was more tired, my legs or my face from all the smiling and laughing.
» TIME FOR R&R
After skiing, we rallied the troops and headed into downtown Rossland for some dinner at the Steamshovel Pub, a locals’ favorite. They had plenty of beers on tap and wide array of culinary delights on the menu.
If you’re planning on spending a few days in the Rossland area, there are several lodging choices like the newly constructed Josie Boutique hotel or the dorm-style rooming at the Red Shutter Inn, which are both located at the base area of Red Mountain. There are also a few hotels in downtown Rossland, which is only a 5-minute drive from the ski resort.
You definitely won’t go hungry here either, Cat-Puccino located at the base of Red Mountain serves up hearty breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Just down the road from the ski resort is the Rock Cut with its pub style dining. It also has a big game room to keep the kids entertained as well as the adults.
BACK ON THE CAT
» After a good night’s rest, it was time for day two at Big Red Cats. Since we went through all the snow safety training the day before, we loaded the cat and headed back out first thing in the morning. On this day, the skies were slightly overcast and cold but it kept the snow light and dry.
Kieren kept us in the trees for better visibility as the light was flat with the overcast skies. For Jenna, she was perfectly happy with Kieren’s choices.
“Kieran was awesome,” she said. “He does a really good job of picking terrain for the conditions, and the tree skiing was awesome. It was perfectly gladed, so you could open it up and ski pretty fast and the snow was also really good in there.”
Day two was once again filled with great turns and big smiles. This time, a fun surprise awaited JJ on the cat ride out to the vehicles.
“They invited me to ride up in the front seat of the cat, which was awesome,” he said. “I got to see first-hand how they drive the cats, and we even broke some trail.”
For everyone in our group, this trip was memorable, especially for JJ who experienced a lot of firsts. His dad Tommy was also pretty stoked to experience and see the enjoyment on his son’s face throughout this trip. I think deep down this gift was more for Tommy’s sake, creating a memory that will last a lifetime. N
By Bob Legasa
Photography By Freeride Media
As Featured In: Winter/Spring 2020
