A photo feature from The Ski Journal, Volume Fourteen, Issue 2, November 2020
Drag your Google Earth view from the very southern tip of mainland Alaska 50 miles due east, and you’d fly directly over the Kitimat and Skeena mountain ranges, home to some of northwest British Columbia’s most remote, rugged, and expansive ski terrain. Zoom in a little further and you’ll find a Walmart, the only one for miles and home to a full inventory of camera SD cards. Not the first stop I imagined during a heli ski trip to Terrace, BC, last February, but a saving grace for a photographer short on memory cards at the edge of nowhere.
Terrace is perhaps more well known for its salmon and steelhead than its pow chasers (world records for both fish species have come from the Skeena River flowing through town). Still, at the intersection of BC’s Interior and Coast ranges, the town of 12,000-plus residents is positioned perfectly to thrive on the adventure tourism that world class fishing, skiing, and mountain biking tend to attract.
Like much of BC, Terrace is steeped in logging history. In fact, at one point it was Canada’s leading producer of telephone and electric poles, not to mention the world’s longest telephone pole, measuring 160 feet. Declining lumber prices in the early 2000’s closed many of the sawmills, but the surrounding skyline tells of the many other opportunities the region provides—peaks that reach for the clouds, a jumbled collection of ridges filling any space the flora allowed them to break through.
Kitimat means, “People of the Snow,” in the indigenous language of Tsimshian—enough reason to let any skier know they’ve found the right place. Still, it’s a far cry from most well-developed ski regions. Other than Shames Mountain, the local co-op ski hill with two chairlifts, you’re on your own for uphill transportation— at times there’s just one cab circling to and from the Northwest Regional Airport, the area’s commercial connection to the outside world.
If there was ever a ski town foil to Aspen, this might be it. The backcountry is lined with high, steep faces and glacially carved bowls flowing into BC’s own pillow factory—big pillows, small pillows, technical, impossible looking pillow lines, and literally pillows on tops of trees on top of pillows. There’s a huge variety of terrain, but the perfectly drifted stacks are what really steals the show.
Terrace has been an idyllic place for Northern Escape Heli-Skiing to operate for the past 16 years. They’ve been growing consistently throughout that time, but still pride themselves on small group heli skiing. In fact, it’s normally you, a couple friends, and a guide moving at your own pace and without the pressure of other clients. There’s also 7,000 acres for cat skiing access alone (that’s twice the size of Mammoth Mountain) should the rare “down day” occur. It’s a mere fraction of their 3,400-square mile tenure. In early 2020 they completed an additional mountain lodge with even quicker ski access.
After last February’s storm cycle blessed northern BC, I joined Maggie Voisin, Tom Wallisch, and ski film mastermind AJ Dakoulas to discover a well-established, but new-to-us corner of the ski world. It snowed day and night for five days straight, allowing a brief glimpse into the deep, cold winter of northwest BC, something the People of The Snow must have known about all along.
Deep gratitude to John Forrest, Yvan Sabourin, Elliot James, the team at Northern Escape, Tom Yaps, and AJ Dakoulas. Learn more at neheliskiing.com and check out the video at theskijournal.com/exclusive/northern-escape-heli
