Cat Skiing at Fortress Mountain
This past Sunday we headed up to Fortress Mountain to check out what the Fortress team has been hard at work on. It had been nearly ten years since my last visit to Fortress Mountain, where I spent nearly 13 years of my weekends as a kid before the lifts stopped spinning. It’s hard not to reminisce about the $2/bag french fries, or the laps of Wallstreet as fresh snow covered your tracks run after run. It brought back a few great memories as we got to the base of the mountain.
We started off our day with a run down Palisade Park, and it was the best turns I've ever had down that run - with not a track or mogul to be seen! The pictures say a lot with some fresh storm snow from earlier in the weekend:
After a few runs, we met up with Joey and some of the Fortress team to get the low-down on what’s going on at the mountain and here’s the latest:
Starting this upcoming weekend on January 21st, Fortress will be starting Cat Skiing operations, and they will be rolling out more information in the near future. Their official website was launched last week, and you can check it out at http://kpow.ca. They are taking bookings for cat skiing with 14 spots available on the days they operate, which you can find on the reservation page (usually Thursday-Sunday). The cost is $350/person for a day of skiing. Visit their website for more information, or call (403) 808-5972 for info & booking - weekends are already booking up.
They’ve got a new snowcat on it’s way up to add to the fleet, and it should be at Fortress early this week - from the photos we saw it looked like a slick cab setup. Here’s a picture filled with memories:
We had a great ski day, with all the same terrain as before and none of the tracks. We did a few more laps off the front-side before making our way down Rookie, and up the far-side where we left some art-work in Cauldron as the sun was starting to set and the Arctic air was blowing-in.
We'd like to thank Joey, Tom, Mel & the rest of the Fortress Mountain team for having us up at the hill & taking us around! Enjoy the cat skiing!
You can check out more photos in our photo gallery & we're working on getting snowfall data into the site soon...
Cheers!