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Need advice as to why more UK people do not go cat skiing

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Hey guys - we have a snowcat skiing business - in Canada I wont mention the name. But I am trying to undersatnd why not more UK people do not go snowcat skiing and riding in Canada. We get lots of Germans and Swedes, people from the US and Canada. It would be great to get peoples feedback.

Thanks
Kieren
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kierengaul, Welcome to snowHeads snowHead
I have only been to Canada once, to Whistler, for us at that time it would have been the extra expense on top of the cost of the holiday. Also it was only our first skiing holiday.
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People with their own mountains tend to be much better at skiing... (therefore more inclined to skiing offpiste/pow). I've never done it because I can't afford it, and it snows a lot inbounds Smile
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kierengaul, I tried it - where DaveC is based - and had a pretty good time... But

1) The snow in the local resort - Fernie - was actually far better than that at the cat skiing operation's hill
2) There was strong pressure to use and hire the operations "fat boy" skis - when for many of us - we would have done better bringing our own all-mountain skis with us. And the hire skis ran out.
3) Relatively few uplifts

I would do it again - but only if I knew the snow on their hill was good, and the snow on local lift-accessed skiing poor.
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I don't think my cat would be very good at skiing. She's a bit reluctant to go out in the snow... Very Happy

I'm not entirely sure what 'cat skiing' is, something along the lines of heli-skiing to get to less accessible off-piste bits I assume? I think a sizeable proportion of British skiers, myself included, stay on piste. Various reasons for this, but often it's down to cost, conditions, ability, insurance. It's not something that's ever appealed to me. But I daresay I've never skied enough to feel trapped by the boundaries of piste skiing. In any case, it's not something I could afford to contemplate right now and my abilities certainly would not be sufficient for such conditions.

It would be nice to go to Canada one day though.
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kierengaul, I think it doesn't have the viral (or indeed real) marketing that heliskiing - and in particular CMH get. When I looked at it as a heli alternative (after a 6 down day week) I didn't see anything that really appealed. But maybe I didn't look too hard. Although your question surprises me - didn't know it was quite so obvious.
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kierengaul, only tried to go once, at Keystone, but it was booked up when we arrived. I know this is not exactly at the hardcore end of catskiing though!

I think the problem is most UK skiers find US snow and all the avy-safe inbound double blacks fantastic, and quite enough, and only travel across the pond occasionally. I've only had about 30 days skiing in the US in 20+ years of skiing altogether....if I'd been to the US as often as I have to Val d'Isere say, I might have got tired of the inbounds stuff and tried catskiing...
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Sorry if this is a dim question but what is cat skiing ?
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Cat skiing uses a cat-tracked vehicle (piste basher with personnel transport cabin) to access off-piste skiing. LIke heli-skiing but less weather dependent as cats can operate the the weather would stop a heli from flyinh
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Wayne wrote:
Sorry if this is a dim question but what is cat skiing ?


Have a look snowHead
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Done it once at Whistler. Had a good day in really deep snow. I would do it again in the right conditions. I guess my main gripe is that you don't get a huge amount of vertical (you could level this at heliskiing too, unless you start paying supplements from what I can see). Forget exactly what we got the day I did it but I think the most they had ever managed was the equivalent of two top to bottom runs in La Grave.
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Hi kierengaul,
Was going to go cat boarding in Fernie when I was there a few years ago - looked great but never got round to it as only in town for a week. Planning on a 2 week stay there in '10 or '11 and getting into the back country is certainally on the agenda, one of the reasons we're going back.
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I think cat skiing has the reputation of being heli skings cheap brother and if you are spending a lot of money crossing to canada why not go the full hog and go heli.There is far greater promotion of heli sking here in the uk than cat sking as you can see from the comments above.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
These prices are off the top of my head so I could be off here, but if cat skiing is approx $250 a day, and resort tickets are near $80 for the day in Fernie - admittedly you can get tickets cheaper through TO's with a little digging, and Fernie's prices are stupid high, but if the price difference is 3 days in resort or 1 day cat skiing, I'd probably take the cat skiing. The thing I noticed in Fernie is that the high end cat ops don't cater for skiers, they cater to people with lots of money who want to stay in their posh lodge, etc etc. That's the part that puts me off - and the smaller cat ops don't really compete on price or terrain.
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Quote:

Forget exactly what we got the day I did it but I think the most they had ever managed was the equivalent of two top to bottom runs in La Grave



That is about 4000 mtrs which is an average days work and an early finish in Le Grave, I guess it depends on the terrain and who knows about it.
2000 mtrs vertical in the alpes is quite easy to find ( AdH, L2A, Chamonix valley, Engelberg, and quite few others )
altho how useable the last few hundred mtrs would be would depend on the day.

If I were to go to NA..then I'd be looking for an operation that did cat-skiing but probably not for a week....
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
> trying to undersatnd why not more UK people do not go snowcat skiing and riding in Canada

The main reason is basically that Cananda is a long way away.
Additonally adventerous skiers can find big terrain in the European alps much closer to home.

Additionally there isnt a big ski culture in the UK (unlike Scandinavia).
Most people live in cities and only ski once or twice a year - so the standard of your average UK punter is pretty low.
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achilles, that was brilliant link! Can't stop laughing!
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JT, Haggis_Trap, my (one) experience of cat skiing was that it was more about the snow than the terrain. the snow was great - waist deep powder. the terrain was fun but not "big". OTOH, the visibility wasn't great on the day we did it so (a) there might have been bigger stuff in better vis and (b) a heli probably wouldn't have flown on the day I went. the latter is a big advantage for cats and one i wasn't really aware of until I read the blurb for the operation I went with
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I am someone who skis almost entirely off piste (and almost entirely in Europe) and about three quarters of the time with guides. I ski with a group of friends (group of 6) and we can book one of the best guides in the world for about €350 each for 6 days. For this we get the equivalent of back country skiing but mostly lift served with just a bit of walking or skinning now and then.

I tried skiing in Whistler and Jackson Hole and (particularly with the latter) felt that everything inbounds skied out extremely quickly if it snowed and it mostly just felt like ungroomed piste skiing. Not the untracked big mountain off piste adventures I was used to in Europe. I expect a good guide to find me untracked snow a week or more after the last fall (except places like Chamonix where I tend not to go now - for exactly that reason).

However it seemed to be very difficult to do out of bounds skiing without quite a lot of walking and the best we did (into Granite a few times and a sort of day tour beyond that) the guides were not allowed to take us - they could only go in the side -country - so we went alone. We made what were either the only or nearly the only tracks when we went back country. To me it was like European ordinary off piste but almost nobody seemed to do it and it mostly involved a lot of walking. I was a bit disappointed, but then unfortunately it didn't snow either time while I was there - except once an inch or two.

After Whistler I tried a week of Heli Skiing at a brand new base in Stewart, British Columbia, by the Alaskan border. The mountains were quite small but we had them to ourselves and some of the routes had not been skied before. Unfortunately there had been high winds and everything not in the trees was breakable crust. We did a huge amount of uplift - about 8 helicopter rides per day - and the trees were great fun if not especially challenging. The endless breakable crust for the first half of the runs off the summits was not much fun though (though I suppose you could call that challenging) and they wouldn't land lower down.

It was a once in a lifetime thing as I can't really afford it, but even with good snow I feel I get much more excitement for my money in Europe. It wasn't especially challenging, but I would probably have got that in Alaska (with the risk of many more no-fly days). I felt that, adding a few extra days in Europe with a really good guide, I would get more, or at least as much ski fun and adventure for a tiny fraction of the cost.

I have wondered about cat skiing, but if you have read the above you may understand the doubts I have that it would give me the fun for my money I get here off piste.

For example, this is not a very big mountain compared to many here (the area is not well known), but by going up lifts and then walking for 20 minutes we found this whole valley with 3 tracks in it (you can see them far down if you enlarge the image twice by clicking on it - they skied in a few hundred yards further left while we skied a big bowl right of the rocks). This was 10 days after the last snow-fall.
(people on here have seen this photo before).
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
kierengaul, Given your location we can hazard a guess at your operation. You probably don't get the volume of UK tourists on hill at Red that you get from domestics & other countries esp Aus/South Africa.

For me the reason would be that its a lot of cash to potentially get stuck with a group of mixed/unknown ability on what is probably moderate terrain (unless you book a whole cat). If I were to go I'd head to one of a few specific recommended operations probably on a standby basis so I could pick my conditions. For other UK skiers it might be that its a lot of cash when they may not be confident in their powder skiing ability. Remember that the £ is not exactly overperforming against the Can $ - easily down a 1/3 over the past few years. The whole luxury lodge thing for many multi-day ops is also a factor I'm sure.
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If I were in North America again and it were on offer I would probably do a day to try it, just as I very occasionally do a drop by helicopter here, in the places it is allowed - often when it is getting hard to find good untracked.
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queen bodecia, just for you



See cats can ski Shocked Laughing
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
Tried it with Island Lake in Fernie. Had a fun day and it was an interesting experience rattling around in the back of a snowcat, but have done a lot more in a day with a guide in Europe and for less moolah.

I'd hazzard a guess that the vast majority of Uk skiiers (snowheads excepted wink ) heading out to Canada have never even heard of cat skiing.
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snowball, I have been Cat skiing in Canada (with Kieren's company as it happens) and would say that shortage/variety of terrain was not really a problem - the terrain they have available is fairly extensive (and has grown quite a lot since we went)
I wished we had skied with the expert group (we skied with the advanced group as MrsH was slightly concerned about lack of steep off piste experience - and skiing with me!! Twisted Evil but she was fine skiing some steeps/tight trees/small cliffs/etc at Red), though as it happened due to the huge amount of snow it really wouldn't have made much difference to the terrain availability due to avvy risk, the only problem was some of the others in the group being a bit slow and complaining about the tree runs - which incidentally were awesome! Happy
I guess it depends what you want. I've kind of had enough of scaring myself skiing super-steeps just for the sake of it, so I found the slightly more chilled out terrain with deep pow, great trees, natural kickers, small cliff and pillow drops, that you can really attack and enjoy really good fun. Obviously if you want long steep chutes and couloirs then Cat skiing might not be the answer snowHead

Kieren, back to your question. If I had the time I'd certainly do Cat skiing again, and with Big Red Cats, though for us it was the reason we went with you was that we had heard about Red from some friends in Whistler and thought whilst we were there a few days cat skiing would be good - I'm not sure we'd have thought lets go a long way into BC for cat skiing specifically.
-Getting into/out-of Castlegar was a lottery - If we did it again we'd fly to Kelowna and get a car.
-Getting to/from Castlegar was awkward and fairly expensive.
-Since we didn't have a car and we were staying in your lodge, getting into town was a bit of a pain - fortunately a couple of your guides and guests helped us out there. This one is more something to beat up the promoters of "Red Resort" as this is a problem of the mountain and Rossland being separate.
- Skiing at Red was superb - not knocking your cat skiing which was great, but as we lucked out with the snow it was probably just as good for us - maybe to get people in from the UK you need to be pushing Red/Granite Mountain too, since travelling all the way from the UK for a few days Cat skiing is not really an option. Even with 3 days on Red and 3 days with you, we still went and spent a couple of weeks in Whistler afterwards (which was fairly dull and overcrowded in comparison! Happy ) perhaps you need to be promoting Cat skiing as part of a bigger trip round some of the interior ski areas (see points above)?
-Perhaps also the kind of Heli-lodge mentality may be a good thing depending on your fellow skiers of course! Happy. You already have a lodge after all. Maybe it was because there was just the two of us, that we felt a little bit isolated and that the Cat skiing was just an activity in the day rather than the reason to be there.
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D G Orf, bless ya!! That is one cool cat! Laughing
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allow me to answer this one, it's because people from the UK can't ski.


/ducks and runs.
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I'm not even a UK skier. So I'm only guessing...

But I seem to find, even amoungst snowheads, the percentage of people able to ski off-piste comfidently is relatively low compare to US and Candadian skiers. So you maybe pitching to a deminished market. I don't know much about other European skiers but I suspect there maybe some truth in "skier from country that has its own mountain are on average better skers", when it comes to off-piste?

Of the small pool of off-piste skiers, a cat operation still have to compete against heli skiing operation. My take on that is, if someone is well-off enough or hardcore enough to fly across the pond to Canada for 2 weeks AND have cash left over, they're quite likely go for heli instead. Contrast that to NA skiers, who didn't spend a small fortune just to travel to Red, the price advantage of cat skiing might just fit the budget.

Again, I'm not entirely sure of what I'm talking. So take it with big grain of salt.
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abc, Add in the percentage of UK skiers who can really ski but as a consequence have their own favourite resorts in Europe. Maybe an appropriate analogy is to consider how many Texans go cat skiing in Canada. They don't have their own snow but Colorado & Utah are a lot closer (and they are generally renowned as being the greatest skiers).
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Hey guys - thanks for all the feedback. This is helping me to get a clearer picture. If anyone else has any comments that would be appreciated.

Kieren
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Quote:

Maybe an appropriate analogy is to consider how many Texans go cat skiing in Canada. They don't have their own snow but Colorado & Utah are a lot closer (and they are generally renowned as being the greatest skiers).

The Texans or the Colorodans and Utahns?
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
beequin wrote:
Quote:

Maybe an appropriate analogy is to consider how many Texans go cat skiing in Canada. They don't have their own snow but Colorado & Utah are a lot closer (and they are generally renowned as being the greatest skiers).

The Texans or the Colorodans and Utahns?


oops a Not missing from the bracket re Texans Embarassed though someone will now no doubt produce a list of all the Texan Winter Olympians.
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fatbob, actually, I'm under the impression Utah and Colorado skiers don't travel to ski.

No, to answer your question, Texans can probably go to Canada as easily as to Utah. But most don't go to Canada because most Canadaian operations (with exception, of course, e.g. Whistler) don't actively market themselves in most of US.

I'm under the impression Cat skiing oepration target intermediate to advance skiers rather than the very expert skier who would have prefer heli skiing instead. Of the intermediate skiers, I'd say NA skiers have a lot more off-piste experience than their UK counterpart. Largely due to the "ski everywhere" policy of NA ski resorts.

Like I said in earlier post, of the small pool of UK skiers crossing the pond, the pool of high-intermediate/low-advance skiers who are confortable skiing off-piste would be particularly small. If that's the target group of skiers for the cat operator, it would explain why there're proportionally fewer UK skiers than US or even German skiers.
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English skiers don't have their own mountains. They mostly do a week per year in Europe and know enough to know that off piste is not avalanche patrolled or protected. Knowing that to ski off piste safely they should hire a guide, they mostly stay on piste.
Of course there is a big bunch of us who ski off piste but I dealt with my own feelings above. At Jackson hole I quickly got tired of skiing hard bumps with the Steep and Deep camp and wanted to make fresh tracks. I was really surprised that the only way we could ski most of the back country (what seems to me proper off-piste - making fresh tracks) was on our own with a map. I would much rather have had the option of a guide.


Last edited by Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see? on Tue 16-06-09 17:21; edited 1 time in total
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snowball, I suspect your experience at JH was related to insurance, and open/closed boundary issues which seem to vary considerably in the US. I'd guess that someone employed by the resort might not be able to guide you outside the rope but say someone from Exum guides would be able. Not totally dissimilar to the fact that a instructor in Europe would not guide you on glaciated terrain but a mountain guide would but add in a whole layer of complexity over who is allowed to ply their trade on whose property. I'm pretty sure the UIAGM guide population in resort areas generally is more limited though they have plenty of those guys guiding climbing in the summer, but there are usually plenty of locals who are willing to show you the slackcountry spots if you can show them you are up to it & safe. Of course this doesn't necessarily make it easy to arrange alll this in advance as a tourist.
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fatbob, I understood it was something to do with a restrictive agreement on access with the National Park (which that area is). The small area of side-country the guides could have taken us but we felt happy doing it ourselves (the Steep and Deep coaches couldn't take us into either).
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snowball wrote:
UK skiers don't have their own mountains..


Really ?
Have a little think about that one wink

Though your right - there isnt a big off piste ski culture in the uk compared to Scandinavia / France / CH.

arno wrote:
my (one) experience of cat skiing was that it was more about the snow than the terrain


Yeah - I can imagine that.
However I am surprised that Cat skiing isnt (generally) more popular ?

Mt Potts (NZ) and Arpa (Chile) seem to get a good write up's for cat skiing.
As others have mentioned cat skiing makes much a little sense that a heli ?
Mainly due to the cheaper overheads, higher people capacity and less weather prone factors.
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kierengaul wrote:
But I am trying to undersatnd why not more UK people do not go snowcat skiing and riding in Canada.


I aint UK people, so couldnt really say, but if I had to guess:

not enough spectators for posing hoorays?

difficult to get the footie on TV?

Laughing Laughing
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Haggis_Trap, Uh yes. I had already noticed that and changed it. Embarassed
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Jonny luv plums, Smile

but they can drink ... (follows Jonny's escape route ...)
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I live in Eastern WA and we've got several local cat ski ops which our ski club is about to get details from for a possible trip next season. I've cat skied twice, and while we had some epic runs, there weren't many of them. Part of it was a couple of slower skiers, part of it was a short day due to a 10am start and lunch break - happy to eat lunch in cat, thx very much! If some folks want a break, they can skip a run and eat.

At a quiet local hill on a powder day, I can get twice the vertical in untracked by lunchtime for a much lower cost.

Still - I'd love to go again, and probably will, especially if an operation can pretty much guarantee 5-6K vertical meters in a day. Big Red cats is certainly one of our options, as is Cataldo near Silver Mountain, Mt Bailey in Oregon, and a couple of others I forget. And we'll make sure we have a cat full of good skiers Wink
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