Golden Alpine Holidays- I walk for powder.

Text and Photography by Anne Wangler

22 days up high at a skitouring lodge in Canada.
22 days of earning every turn.
22 very, very long days from 05:30 until 23:00
22 days spending time with like-minded people far from society.
22 days of hard work.
22 days of seemingly endless dishes.
22 days of learning
And 22 days of the best, simple life and sharing the love for skiing.

  What was supposed to be only a quick trip became a 3-week adventure.I ended up rebooking my flight home 3 times. At first due to great skiing and then we got stuck a couple of times because of valley fog. The helicopter simply couldn´t fly. Well, there´s definitely worse places to get stuck in!  

The Golden Alpine lodges are located in the Selkirks, to be precise the Esplanade, a mountain range between Golden and Revelstoke. There are 4 lodges, I got to spend time at two of them, Sunrise and Sentry. Both beautifully located with absolutely mind-blowing terrain, both for tree skiing as well as an amazing Alpine. Sunrise is a more simple lodge where you have to haul your own water, and Sentry, a fairly new, very classy lodge.

The Sunrise lodge is called "Sunrise" for a reason

We arrived dealing with a very shallow snowpack but day after day it snowed a little more, conditions got better and better and so did our confidence in the snowpack.…Until the big surface hoar crystals that had formed got buried.The recipe for effective surface hoar growth is rather specific: a clear, cold sky, a high relative humidity, and relatively calm winds.It surely does look very pretty but becomes a very fragile weak layer notorious for surprising behavior and persistent instabilities and that´s exactly what we´ve been dealing with.

The snowpack got really touchy, we were well aware, moved with caution and adapted our objectives accordingly. We stuck to smaller, supported slopes. Mellow skiing. Soul skiing, which was great especially in the early season. Nevertheless, I can only imagine the potential of this area when there´s a solid, more stable snowpack. ! For a reason big film production have been coming there for years. I´m so grateful I got to see and experience this place for the first time and cannot wait to return.  
What a pretty place on earth.

 Hutlife at Sunrise 

Magical sunrises

Escaping the fog around the lodge. Sunset touring mission with Hoji