Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames0910
It's hard to compare because we have ski cultures that have developed so differently.
Europeans resorts tend to feature on-piste skiing (groomers). Whitehorn at Louise, most of the stuff worth skiing at Kicking Horse or Revy, and huge sections of Whistler would all be out-of-bounds and uncontrolled at a European resort. On the other hand, they don't frown on ducking the fence and those who do are prepared with appropriate avy gear.
Resort size, lifts + apres ski options go to Europe.
Terrain quality & in-bounds run difficulty both go to Canada.
Powder's probably a split (but the snow lasts for days in their off-piste areas).
Quantity of resorts goes to Europe (way more developed).
All-around skier skill goes to Canada (no groups of 12 yr olds ripping up the entire mountain over there)
Also, it seemed to me that Europeans look at the Rockies the same way that we look at the Alps (i.e. bucket list). We're very lucky to have such great skiing in our backyard, and accessible without having to take a weeklong vacation.
TLDR:
Europe has huge ski resorts, but the terrain is predominantly groomed runs.
Canada has less ski resorts, which are smaller than in Europe — but much better off-piste skiing.
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I can second this. I spent a year living in the alps trying many of the resorts in Switzerland and Austria (I can't comment on Italian or French Alp resorts but my understanding is they are similar) and Skiing there is very much a social activity so the resorts while huge dedicate their resources to the groomers. Which was fine by me because there was always fresh powder that lasted to the end of the day.
That said the difficulty of their terrain does not even get close to what we see here in Western Canada. There is a reason that our skier's got the nicknames of the Crazy Canucks. What we consider a blue run can easily be classified as a black diamond or more difficult over there.
Not saying that this is a bad thing by any means, I had one hell of a time riding over there, its just different. Also they dont like glades nearly as much, probably has to do with the whole dangerous aspect of it.