How to look ‘steezy’ in the snow capital of cool

Eva ignores the squirrels sashaying across snow in Whistler village. It’s business time so she’s in uniform. Her black torso is harnessed with the red emblem of the Canadian Avalanche Rescue Dog Association and there’s a challenge ahead.

The lobby of the Fairmont Chateau Whistler is a pungent overload of Christmas spices and pine needles, children are pinging around like pinballs, and a fur-lined guest is striding towards Eva.

“Aww, you’re so cute,” the woman squeals, ruffling fur on bended knees. The hound looks pleadingly at handler Matt O’Rourke and awaits his command.

“Alright Eva,” he whispers, “we’re going to have some tummy rubs apparently now.”

Matt O’Rourke, originally from Cooma, and avalanche-rescue dog Eva at Whistler, Canada.

Eva isn’t just a PR exercise. The remarkable bond between dog and man can, quite literally, be the difference between life and death in the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains of British Columbia. The resort that lies about two-hours drive from Vancouver receives an average 12 metres of snow each year and this year, O’Rourke is ferociously busy.

O’Rourke is an Australian avalanche technician and dog handler, a ski patroller and a paramedic who left his Snowy Mountains home town of Cooma in NSW to settle in Whistler about 12 years ago. Eva is an American Labrador, trained to detect human scent under snow.

Avalanches affecting the regular ski runs are rare at Canada’s biggest ski resort, because a team of avalanche controllers continually mitigate hazards to ensure safe skiing on groomed runs. It’s a different story in the backcountry. In theory, expert skiers are out there alone but, in practice, it’s specialists like O’Rourke and Eva who are called upon as rescuers when things go wrong.

Nothing is going to go wrong for me on the day that ski guide Mercedes Nicoll arrives en-piste in brilliant sunshine. She averts her gaze from the double black diamond runs falling like bolts of white silk from the peaks of the spectacular Coast Mountains.

“First I’m gonna teach you how to carry these properly,” she says, spinning skis in a one-handed twisted pike onto the shoulder. “I want you to look steezy. I want you to be comfortable.”

Mercedes Nicoll, a four-times Canadian Winter Olympian.

I am not comfortable. Nicoll is a four-time Canadian Winter Olympian who speaks the language of the halfpipe snowboarder. She is a superhuman – elite athlete, coach, adventurer, public speaker, painter and cook – with a blood-born feeling for snow and a textbook knowledge of mountain sport.

“Steezy?” I enquire.

“Cool,” she responds. “Skiers aren’t usually steezy, unless they’re riding park well, but it’s always important to look the part.”

Whistler-Blackcomb is the home of cool and consistently ranked as one of the world’s best ski resorts. Nicoll is one in a team of experts for hire as hosts across more than 200 runs threaded over the resort’s diverse terrain. She’s a force of nature on a snowboard, can do a 900 (two full rotations above the seven-metre/22-foot walls of the halfpipe), and knows all there is to know about “washouts” (injury resulting from failure).

A terrible crash in the halfpipe nearly ended her life at the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014. She’s telling this story while gliding above the tree-line in the Peak 2 Peak Gondola – one of the world’s highest and longest ski lift rides – from Blackcomb to Whistler mountain.

“It was hot weather and the snow wasn’t working for anyone then,” Nicoll says. “On the practice run, coming back into the 22-foot walls of the halfpipe, I clipped my heel and fell, smashing my hip bone, bruising my face, breaking a couple of ribs and pushing a couple of vertebrae out of place. I got up and completed the event without knowing that I was concussed.”

Afterwards, Nicoll could not walk or talk properly, and recovery took two long years. Then she got back up again to compete in her fourth Olympic Games in South Korea in 2018. “I call it my gold medal moment,” she entrusts. “I didn’t get a medal but I was overjoyed to land that trick - even if the judges were not - I was really proud of myself for just getting back out there.”

Getting out there takes courage, Nicoll is a great motivator, and we are soon floating on clouds without a helicopter.

Out and about at Whistler.

The Olympian is one ingredient in a shopping list of hyper-exhilarating experiences to be ticked off at Whistler, but proximity to the coast means the resort doesn’t get the glorious dry powder of British Columbia’s interior. For that, skiers must seek out a lesser-known gem, and Silver Star Mountain Resort in Vernon is easily accessible, with a one-hour flight from Vancouver to Kelowna.

The family-friendly front of the mountain opens in late November, but typically, the backside opens a week or two later with acres of powder snow. Locals wait all year to be let loose on untouched mountain terrain buried deep in the white. The town explodes for it.

Skiing the powder snow at Silver Star, Canada

Powder hounds are up at dawn for “Opening Day” and Scott Sanderson is one of them. He’s primed on top of the mountain at Paradise Camp cafe when the ski patrollers rocket past calling out: “They’ve cut the gate: here they come!”

A colour wave of skiers are heading Sanderson’s way so he hastens to click on skis and charges straight over the Head Wall. He skis like a lunatic, goes with the rush, follows his instincts making first tracks on a steep double black diamond run. Skiing like that is better than breakfast. Indeed, the executive head chef is still flushed with excitement at dinner in the new D’Argento Italian restaurant, one of five restaurants managed by Sanderson at Silver Star.

“When there’s that much powder, you just point the skis down, hit pillow after pillow top to bottom and it’s absolutely amazing,” he says, placing a bowl of perfectly-formed homemade ravioli under my nose. “It’s as good as heli-skiing. It’s like Christmas because it defines the special sense of community in this town.”

Community is a distinctive factor in a small resort that keeps out of the spotlight. It never gets too busy and being higher in altitude, has slopes usually untracked by hoards of holidaymakers, with its ski lifts transporting far fewer people up mountain than at Whistler and Big White.

The core of the cute village was built in the 1980s to resemble a 19th-century mining village. A tiny traffic-free square is lined with friendly cafes and brightly painted Victorian-era styled buildings, wooden sidewalks and faux gaslights. One side of the village opens directly onto the slopes. Individual houses built in the same style and colours are dotted around slopes above. Nearby, there’s a natural ice rink on a lake, and a tubing hill. Nearly all accommodation is either ski-in/ski-out or less than 30 seconds walk to the snow.

Silver Star’s Victorian-style village square.

The 1328 hectares of slopes suit all standards, with a mixture of runs plunging through glade trees or down challenging mogul fields. Skiers can go by fast gondola straight from the village to a high-altitude summit of 1915 metres.

And here lies the true luxury of travel. Silence but for the pines stirring. The sense of wonder that binds through time with one heartbeat reminds of O’Rourke.

He had settled into a plush hotel lounge, dog curled into his lap, talking about the toll of working snow fields by rope and helicopter. “Camaraderie is critical. The chance to talk post-incident over a beer, diffuse the extreme consequences of this way of living, that’s important. We see fatalities, fairly intense gnarly injuries, and they revolve around some really crazy technical rescues, but that side of the job is super interesting.”

Then he recalled the car bumper sticker that he’d seen somewhere: ‘Even ski patrollers need heroes’.

“I’m no hero,” he says, “but Eva, she’s a hero, for sure.”

THE DETAILS

FLY

Air Canada has regular direct flights from Brisbane and Sydney to Vancouver with connections on to Kelowna. Whistler is a two-hour drive from Vancouver and Silver Star a one-hour drive from Kelowna. See aircanada.com

TOUR

At Whistler, thrills extend to remote glacier tours by snowmobile, bobsled rides and zip-line adventures, and all that euphoria often leads to a downing of celebratory vodkas in the ice bar or other apres ski activities. See whistlerblackcomb.com

Around Silver Star, there is also a trail network that makes it one of North America’s top cross-country skiing destinations. A trail network extends 105 kilometres from Silver Star Mountain Resort to Sovereign Lake. See destinationsilverstar.com

STAY

Fairmont Chateau Whistler is a plush, ski-in/ski-out five star property with rooms from $C699 ($756) during winter. See fairmont.com/whistler

At Silver Star, the Grandview Pinot Peaks, 208-357 Monashee Road, Pinot Peaks is a two bedroom, two bathroom condominium near the lifts. From $C294 ($329) a night. See silverstarstays.com

Anabel Dean travelled with support from Destination Canada, Destination British Columbia, Tourism Whistler and Fairmont. See canada.travel; hellobc.com