A ski weekend in Nelson

Nelson, a small town in the Kootenay region is home to the Whitewater Ski Resort which is part of the famous Powder Highway. Known knee deep powder, cat skiing and other outdoor activities my ski buddy Erna and I decided to check it out.

Since it's a long drive from Vancouver, we booked a flight to Castlegar Airport, which due to its location in a valley is more closed than open in the winter due to weather conditions. Apparently, the instrument approaches are considered amongst the most challenging of any in use at a commercial airport in North America. Lucky us, the weather gods were on our side and upon landing at Castlegar, the passengers, some of whom had been waiting for 2 days to fly out, cheered and clapped their hands, happy to have made it.

A group of guys from Vancouver whom we ran into on several occasions were on a mission to get confirmation from the locals that Nelson was indeed the weed capital of the Kootenays. The story goes that the weed is transported by backcountry skiers across the border into Washington state.
Whitewater is a small ski resort with only 3 chair lifts, however, there is some great terrain to be explored and despite the lack of fresh snow, we were still able to find stashes of powder on some of the glade runs.

It is really a local's resort, apparently, 70% of the locals have a season pass and the atmosphere on the mountain is very relaxed and casual. The ski shuttle from Nelson to Whitewater only runs once a day and is a great way to meet locals or run into our male friends each morning. The shuttle driver is a lucky guy, he drives skiers up to the mountain, spends his day in the backcountry before driving the shuttle back to Nelson at the end of the day! What a hard life being a ski bum!

The Fresh Tracks Cafe at the base of WH2O is known for it's superb food, in fact, the recipes have been published in several cookbooks that became national bestsellers.
We had 3 days to explore the mountain and enjoyed the varied terrain from great groomers to moguls to glades with stashes of powder. Tracking our progress on our ski apps and comparing maximum speeds, vertical drop, distance and number of runs was part of our day.

We didn't run into the bear though….

In the evenings, we explored downtown Nelson which is basically a few blocks along Baker Street.
After 3 great days, my ski buddy headed for Red Mountain while I made my way back to Castlegar to catch the afternoon flight back to Vancouver. The shuttle driver was a funny character, for some reason we got into talking about religion and politics and he was so convinced that if women ruled the world, it would be such a better place!!! He might have a point there. When I finally got to Castlegar airport, the Air Canada guy greeted me with 'You must be Ms. Risler', I was the last of about 15 passengers to check in. Gotta love small town airports.