Top 5 resorts in North America for hard-core skiers and boarders.
This is not a list of resorts with fancy facilities, swinging nightclubs, and state-of-the-art lifts with heated seats. It’s a list of our favourite resorts for hard core skiers who crave powder and long seasons, and don’t mind earning their turns.
1. Alyska:
Big mountain, big hikes, steep chutes, and 500+ inches of snow a season makes this Alaskan ski resort an obvious choice.
2. Wolf Creek
Located in Southern Colorado Wolf Creek prides itself on the skier experience. It doesn’t try and maximise revenue by crowding the place out. You won’t find fancy lifts here. Their website looks like it was created on a Mac 64 (Sorry guys, it’s true). There’s no real apres scene, but Wolf Creek gets the most snow in Colorado by a long way.
When you bombing down their empty glade runs, their funny website simply becomes irrelevant!! https://wolfcreekski.com
3. A-Basin.
This high altitude Colorado resort is usually the first to open and last to close most seasons. It’s steep and there’s an amazing variety of terrain. The East Wall in spring is seriously fun, and there’s no shortage of out of the way steeps. A Basin also has a top shelf apres scene in the car park.
4. Jackson Hole:
There’s a reason why Jackson Hole attracts red hot free skiers from around the world: It’s steeps are legendary and the snow is plentiful and mint quality. Yes it’s expensive to live there but people do make it happen. BTW, it’s not just Corbett’s. There’s a bit more to this place than the USA’s most famous ski run.
5. Kicking Horse (Golden BC)
This is a pretty stright forward mountain. The Tram takes you top. There 1314 meters of vertical (5th biggest in North America), 3486 acres of skiable terrain, 5 alpine bowls and a serious amount of black and double black runs. Kicking Horse hosted the Free Ride World Tour, and the face they used is now within the resort. Their hashtag is #thishorserocks. And yes it does.
Honorable mentions. Alta / Snowbird, Telluride, Palisade Tahoe, Bridger Bowl, Revelstoke, Fernie, Grand Targhee, Silverton.