Editors Note: The sarcasm is thick in this article, and perfectly in line with the unique personality of Red Mountain Resort. There’s only one way to find out how great the people are there, you’ve got to go!
7. TOWNIES
When we go skiing, we expect a certain, well, level of artifice for us to feel at home. We like gingerbread house ski villages thrown up overnight by offshore land barons! Towns that have been built by an algorithm calibrated to spur a purchase every 29 steps! One of RED Mountain Resort’s biggest problems is Rossland. Who wants a real town this close to their skiing? This place has schools and stone buildings and legit restaurants and a Mayor and an actual grocery store! Folks raise their families here! In fact, some plaque informed us that Rossland is a small city left over from BC’s Gold Rush and the place is just dripping in history. History? When we’re skiing?! We’ll slam that book shut right now, thanks. Now where can a fella find an $21 reheated Costco burrito around here?
They even make up weird words like “Indespondent” >
Buy Red Mountain Lift Tickets in Advance and Save
6. NO DELIVERY
If you want a new doorknob, what do you do? Push a few buttons on your phone and Amazon drops that brassy goodness right on your doorstep. Books, clothes, video games, sweetbreads—you name it, they deliver. But just try and get a Canadian mountain adventure delivered to you at work or at home. RED will sell you lift tickets over the internet or let you book accommodations but they don’t deliver any of that. They actually expect you to A) go to Canada and B) dress for the weather with skis or a snowboard to boot. Talk about behind the times!
Lift tickets this cheap means something is up >
5. KEEP THE CHANGE
For you, no ski holiday is complete without that scrubbed-clean feeling of empty pockets and bank accounts sucked dry. This is a big reason not to ski RED this winter. It’s actually hard to spend all your money here. It’s almost impossible. With lift tickets well below the industry standard for anything approaching their acreage and/or vertical and the added bonus of being in Canada where US Dollars are worth (waaaayyyyyy) more, RED just isn’t much of a rip-off at all. You should definitely ski somewhere else to satisfy that craving for financial rock bottom.
Savings Comparison calculators are nonsense >
4. CROWD CONTROL
The crowds at RED are also decidedly sub-par. Sure, you’ll get a bit of a lift-line first thing in the morning as everyone starts their spread across three mountain peaks but, after that, it’s like you’re just stuck out here in the beautiful BC mountains with your friends. How are you supposed to know that you’re #killingit or #rightplacerighttime if you aren’t constantly surrounded by angry strangers and hour-long lines and selfie sticks in the face? No idea.
360 Descents off of one peak is stupid and confusing >
3. POWDER IS SLOW
Snow sliders love to crow about their great powder days, their snorkel pow days, their nipple-deep days, blah blah blah. And RED Mountain is no exception. Folks in the Koots live for powder. It’s like a religion or something. But how come nobody ever talks about how slow powder is? All that fluff pushes against your nose and swallows you up and it’s hard to get going even close to as fast as you might at some megaresort where it only snows once every six weeks and the rest of the time is running manmade so blue it’s kind of beautiful. So, yeah, we said it: Powder is slow.
And why would someone pay $10 for cat skiing? >
2. WIPE THAT SMILE OFF YOUR FACE!
Canadians are notoriously nice and polite. In fact, they make Minnesotans look like Boston cabbies nearing the end of a night shift. This can be a bit disconcerting to skiers and snowboarders more accustomed to the typical mega-resort experience of “me first” and “gimme gimme!” It’s borderline common on this side of the border for locals to introduce visitors to secret stashes and insider tricks and cute cousins. “Oh great, what am I gonna complain about on Facebook now? I’m sick to $^&%@ death of all these $^&%@ Canadians being so $^&%@ nice to me all the time. And right to my face, too!”
There’s this weird guy they call Nick too >
1. LODGE-PODGE
For most of us, staying on the ski hill involves frumpy cabins with cracked lampshades, dark rooms that smell like overturned graves, and coffee makers so arcane we scream like Braveheart. This is how we know we’re skiing! And having fun in the mountains! Am I right? Well, RED really needs to work on its accommodation offerings to make us feel at home. The condos at Slalom Creek are clean and bright and well-appointed with private hot tubs on deck. The new boutique ski-in-ski-out hotel, The Josie, is straight-up gorgeous. Heck, even RED’s modern hostel, Nowhere Special (a 2-min walk to the chairlift), is brand new! What kind of ski holiday is this when I have a spotless steam shower and matching silverware?! This is getting ridiculous.
Their brand-new modern hostel is a little overkill >
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