March 15th 2020. One year ago. A day that will unfortunately stick in my memory for a long time. It was our final day of skiing at Kicking Horse for the season. The next morning we woke up to find out Kicking Horse Resort was closed. That was the end. We had guests at the time. It was looking like our best year ever for occupancy. We had a group from Vermont/Alaska and another group from Germany and Italy. The American group had been doing some ski touring and was not supposed to leave for another week to return home. Finally by Wednesday night I managed to convince them they should return home as I was concerned for their health as well as ours. The next day they left. Same with the European group who were heli-skiing with a local company, The heli-skiing company shut down on the Wednesday. Our guests again were not supposed to leave until the Saturday. I was concerned about the Italian who did not seem that healthy. They left for home also on the March 19th . The Italian when he got home did get tested and was negative.. It has been a surreal year to say the least for us. Tourism throughout the world has been devastated to say the least. Our season at Vagabond Lodge has been dismal with the fact the bulk of our usual visitors are from overseas. We have had a few regular guests come and stay from Alberta but only a few. Has it been worth opening? Probably not. The resort has seen a steady base of skiers driving for the day from Alberta. Mostly the younger set. They hop in the car at 7 am and are here by 10. At 4 they hop in the car and drive home. We have managed to limp through the winter with the ski area closing on April 4th. It has been a good year for snow up to now, which has been really the only positive besides the fact we have stayed healthy as well as our family. And with being vaccinated hopefully before the summer there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It has been frustrating in BC getting a handle on what exactly is being planned for vaccinating the general population. It is a dogs breakfast to say the least. The provincial government actually hired Telus for their call centre to book times to get the shot. Have they ever tried to get through to Telus at the best of times? What a disaster. You would have thought they would have had something in place for months but instead they roll out their plan it seems, at the last minute. I would have thought they would have known a vaccination plan would be necessary. Brutal. A friend in Mexico has gotten his already and we are waiting for a date yet. I suspect the summer will be relatively busy for travellers in our area. With warm weather hopefully coming soon, everyone will want to get out of town and the mountains seem like a safe place to be. We are getting down to the final runs of the season and still hopeful of a good dump of snow before it all closes but no complaints if it doesn't come. Bring it on. I am looking forward to some mountain biking, hiking and kayaking. Oh yes also getting vaccinated would be nice too.
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I love exploring the amazing terrain we have around Vagabond Lodge. They call it "slackcountry." It means taking the gondola to the top of the mountain then heading out of bounds and then being able to come back to the resort at the bottom. You can really go in either direction. My favourite is to head south. It involves about a 30 minute hike/climb and then away you go. We only go with snow conditions are safe and never go without avalanche safety gear such as transceiver, probes, shovels. Nothing is 100% fool proof. I usually go with a former National Park Warden who knows all the terrain like the back of his hand. I feel safe going with him and we follow his instructions. The video is from a few days ago with him and a few other people. It doesn't get much better with your clothes on. Our coldest spell of the winter is over. For the past week or so daytime temperatures were in the -20C range and even colder. I was shocked to see it as busy as it was here at Kicking Horse. But I have been surprised generally about the skiers here this winter. I did not go skiing during this cold spell. Been there, done that. I personally do not enjoy skiing when it gets that cold. Instead I did some snowshoeing out our backdoor and that was great. It was cold to start but you warm up quickly. But with the cold weather I started to think a lot about warmer days. I am truly optimistic about better days ahead concerning the pandemic and the tourism industry. I can see some glimmers of hope in the future. But with warmer days ahead, I think of what I like to do the most and that is kayaking. Our backyard is an adventure playground. One of my favourite places to kayak is on Bow Lake in Banff National Park. It is about an hour and a half drive from Vagabond. Truly amazing spot. Sometimes winds can be tricky and storms can blow up in an instant it seems which I have experienced. I love skiing and usually I don't think about summer until the ski season is over. But this year it is a season filled with good thoughts. Video is from last summer kayaking on Bowl Lake. We usually get a cold spell each winter and we have it right now. Temperatures range from about -16C at the bottom of the resort to about -22C at the top. Sorry...too cold for skiing for me. Been there, done that. We haven't had too many guests this winter but we do have some right now and they are braving the colder weather and seem to be enjoying it. We are certainly better off than an hour east at Lake Louise and Sunshine Village. Sunshine Village outside of Banff is actually closed today due to the colder weather but they are in the -30C range and with limited indoor space because of covid they are doing the right thing and closing. I see Marmot at Jasper is also closed today. We are so lucky to have a gondola. No way I am getting on a chair lift in that kind of temperature. It is supposed to get warmer closer to the weekend so it is not a long cold spell. Our covid numbers in BC has stabilized in the past couple weeks which is great to see and in Golden we have managed to have a few isolated cases but no outbreaks unlike Whistler, Big White and Fernie in recent weeks. The BC Government is supposed to unveil some new restrictions for ski areas in the next few days. I assume this has to do with Whistler and staff housing and parties. With the big long weekend coming up for Alberta and BC there is concern and rightly so, about outbreaks as a result of holiday time. We hope everyone will take a deep breath and wait for travel and parties, when it is safe. We know how lucky we are to live where we do. Friend Patrick and I were one of the first a few days ago to climb to the top of T1 after a big snowfall to get some first tracks. It was a special day. Enjoy the video. If you are looking for a feel good story for today, click here. This story happened just down the road from Golden. We know we are lucky living where we are and we do not take that fact for granted. It continues to be a great ski winter here at Vagabond Lodge and I am still amazed how busy the resort is. Here at Vagabond, we are basically closed for the season. We do have a few reservations but just a few and are mostly return guests. We have been fortunate in our area and in BC, they have not shut down everything as in other places in the country and in the world. But on the other hand, maybe it would be better to close down the province for a couple weeks and get the case load down. It is a double edged sword, to try and keep the economy going but at the same time telling everyone to not go out or travel. We have had a treat in recent weeks when we have gone to the top of the mountain for dinner at the Eagle's Eye Restaurant. They have done a good job of limiting the numbers of people and making sure everyone is spread out. Instead of 100 people, they are only allowing 49 maximum. The food has been the best it has been for a number of years. It has basically been the first time we have gone out for dinner in months. I have continued to ski most days with friend Patrick. It usually takes about 25-30 minutes wait at the gondola and generally everyone is doing a good job with social distancing and wearing a mask. A lot of skiers are wearing buffs instead of masks, which I understand are not good for face covering. It may be something the resort should do and clamp down on that. The big concern we have is if there is a big case number at ski resorts, the government may shut them down as in Ontario. Whistler has some big numbers in recent weeks, as well as in Fernie, and Big White. Once it takes off, it is difficult to get those numbers down. BC Health is not doing a good job in their communication on the number of cases in smaller areas, unless there is a major outbreak. Here in Golden the latest numbers are 8 new cases but that was from over a week ago. They could give live updates but don't for some reason. I think this is not doing justice to the local community. Besides the skiing we are keeping our heads down and waiting for our turn to get vaccinated which should be in the spring or early summer. But in the interim we are snowshoeing and skiing. As I said at the start, we know how lucky we are and hopefully we can share with our awesome guests next winter. Video is some off-piste skiing a couple days ago with some friends. It's the start of a new year and we can only hope it will be better than 2020. Certainly if the snow conditions are an indication it is off to a good start. We have been getting pretty steady dumps of snow and the skiing is pretty sweet. Friend Patrick who is in our bubble, and I have been trying to get out most days for a run and T1 or T2 are usually our destination and we have not been dissapointed. I have been surprised by how busy it has continued to be even after Christmas and New Years. I have no idea of where the skiers are coming from as our area does not have a big population base. Despite the directive from BC Health to ski at your local hill, and avoid non essential travel there seems to be a lot of people coming from outside our area. Our greatest fear right now besides contracting covid, is to have all the ski resorts shut down and that certainly is a possibility if the numbers keep going up. Kicking Horse Resort has done a pretty good job though of making sure it is as safe as possible in the lift lines and making sure people are masked up. Golden has had a bit of an outbreak of covid in the past couple weeks which is disturbing considering the limited health facilities we have here. We went from 0 local cases to 14 within a week and are still waiting for new data for this past week. BC Health has extended the restrictions until early in February. There seems to be a lot of people deciding they do not need to follow the directives. For Vagabond Lodge, we have basically had the whole season cancelled. We are hoping later in February if restrictions are lifted a bit, we can get back into business. But the key will be for the numbers to drop dramatically. But right now we are basically telling everyone to stay home and be part of the solution. We are certainly luckily living where we live so we can take advantage of our backyard. If you are looking strictly at snow conditions, it has been a great start to the winter season here at Kicking Horse Resort. We have had a number of big snowfalls already and maybe one of the biggest one-night dump since we opened Vagabond Lodge 17 years ago with about 40cms of snow last week. We have been lucky in our area with not many cases of covid but that can change quickly especially with a lot of non locals coming skiing. I am actually surprised by the number of day skiers who are travelling here. I suspect a number of them are realizing that Sunshine Village has closed their ticket sales and the same at Lake Louise and they just drive another 45 minutes and they are here. Kicking Horse in the last couple days appears to be scaling back on their numbers they are allowing on the hill. Initially they were not selling any lift tickets at the resort, and then they were . With all the fresh powder there were some pretty long lineups for a few days. Now I see they are publishing the fact they are sold out, at least until January 1. Interesting. It is a good thing in my mind. Once it becomes too busy, some people have a tendency to become impatient and not following some of the rules such as always wearing a mask and wearing it properly while not skiing. I went up yesterday for a run, and waited about 30 minutes in the lift line. Everyone in the lift line was doing a good job with the masks and social distancing. Once you are the top of the mountain, this resort is great for spreading out. We hiked up to the top of T2 yesterday and there was only 1 other person on the run down. Along with friend Patrick we have had some good runs already with all the fresh snow. Right now BC Health is still asking everyone to stay local and avoid non essential travel. It is a trying time to say the least for the tourism industry around the world. Hopefully 2021 will be a lot better. Be safe, stay healthy, wear a mask. Enjoy the video from December 18th. Amazing day. Another season has started at Kicking Horse and it was the best opening day conditions I can remember and we have been here for 17 years. Some of the opening dates though have been earlier. They have had over 300cms at the top of the mountain and surprisingly good coverage at the bottom. One more good dump and it will be good all the way. Usually you have to pick you way around rocks near the bottom but not this year. I went up with friend Patrick on opening day and was surprised by the great coverage. We skied a couple of runs off the stairway to heaven chairlift and had some nice powder despite the fact we didn't start skiing until about 1. Kicking Horse did a good job I thought with the lift access. It took about 30 minutes to get on the lift and there are a number of protocols in place depending on if you are skiing alone or with other people. Check out their website for more detail. BC Health mandates everyone in public space need to wear a mask. From what I could see everyone was. Some maybe not wearing it as well as they should be but they did have masks on. Overall a good job. Food service will be a challenge. In the evenings at the resort there really are only two places open for food, Winston Pub and Peaks Grill. I suspect most people will do take-out which will be tough on the eating spots, since the profit is in liquor. BC health has asked for only essential travel until at least January 9th. Obviously that will mean a pretty quiet and lean Christmas for the tourism industry throughout the province. Vagabond Lodge is deemed an essential service so we are allowed to be open with restrictions in place. It is very confusing for the hotel industry in general. On one hand everyone is asked to stay home, but we are allowed to be open. For whom? Our area has been very fortunate with very few cases of Covid. The latest numbers by BC Health shows only 4 cases of residents in the past month in Golden. With some newcomers into our area with the ski resort opening, it will be interesting to see if that number stays low. As long as people follow the guidelines of wearing a mask and social distancing we hope cases will remain low. Enjoy the video from opening day. Be safe and stay healthy and wear a mask. #wearamask We are not sure what will unfold in the next few days regarding covid-19 restrictions in BC and Alberta. Increasing numbers of covid have already put a hold on reservations for the upcoming season. We looked pretty good for parts of the upcoming winter but in the past few weeks cancellations have been coming in daily and I really can't fault the guests. Especially those coming by airplane. I would not want to fly right now. We still have a few coming from either Alberta or elsewhere in BC but they are all driving. But at the same time the BC Government has asked all their residents to stay at home for the next week at least and I suspect that will be extended. But having said that, health comes first but the tourism industry is getting devastated throughout the world. Kicking Horse Resort will be opening on December 10 and our first guests right now are scheduled for December 15th. Ski passes are available on-line only for those who do not have a season pass. You can get them off the Kicking Horse website as they will be limited and there will not be any sold at the resort itself. We do have a covid protocol at Vagabond Lodge and will be limiting the number of people to 50% of our usual occupancy. Instead of up to 20 people at a time, we will be only taking a maximum of 10 or 12 depending on if they are from the same bubble. One thing we have decided to do it provide lunch to our guests along with our usual breakfast. It will be quite basic with some hot soup and a hunk of my sourdough bread and will be available for couple hours in the afternoon. Food service and restrooms will be the biggest issue I think on the resort itself with the various health regulations in place. Especially on a busier day. Whether we will have a busier day is still questionable. We will get through this. Wear a mask and follow all the health protocol. Until we see you back, video is from some fun from last winter at Kicking Horse. |
KenKen along with his wife Lori are the owners and operators of Vagabond Lodge at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort. Archives
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