[Rutuu]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

No. In the mid 70s a guy named Charlie Locke - legit Mountain Guide but also oilman/rancher millionaire - bought into Lake Louise. In '86 he bought Fortress, and over the next decade he created RCR (Resorts of Canadian Rockies) by buying Wintergreen, Nakiska, Kimberley, Fernie, and two resorts in Quebec.

Around 2001 RCR struggled financially and Edwards bought in. In 2004 they closed Fortress, and didn't bother to do anything to preserve the assets up there (already not in the best shape, but still habitable). One of the biggest issues was that the bridge from the highway to the access road was condemned, and it was a whole mess of who should pay and why would GoA pay for a bankrupt resort/etc.

A guy named Zrinko bought it and managed to run it for a season or two with an ATCO trailer (b/c the buildings were now frigged), but it fizzled in a mess where he was selling season passes even though it almost certainly wasn't going to open the next season.

In late 2000s Charlie Locke bought back Lake Louise; Murray continued to own RCR and bought Kicking Horse around 2011. RCR is a cluster#### - gondola derailment at Kicking Horse seriously hurt (killed?) some people, big fire a few years ago at the main lift at Kimberley basically killed a season there, and some injury/death? lift incidents at the Quebec resorts. Whereas Lake Louise has added like 4 new lifts recently and seems to be doing well.

Also in the late 2000s, the son of Sunshine's owner Ralph Scurfield (and grandson of Ralph Sr. who used to be a Flames owner) was skiing at Sunshine with some other nepo-baby dip####s like the son of Westjet's CEO and they went into a closed area - not just out of bounds, but a closed area within the resort which is much more serious and dangerous (could send an avalanche onto regular runs). Senior patrollers gave them #### for it and it turned into a huge mess that ended with ~ 4 long time staff (head of patrol/head of ops/etc) got fired. Some/all of those 4 guys bought Fortress and turned it into a cat skiing operation (and also renting it as a film site (Inception and Revenant I think), Avy courses, and selling fresh water or something).

Pretty sure some/all of those ~4 guys are still involved, can't remember if they were all from SSV originally. I'm not sure on the status of the bridge - I think it got fixed up a bit for Inception, but it hasn't really been open to the public in the last 20 years. Looks like it might have been under construction on Google sat view...can't remember if it got frigged again in the 2013 floods?


But going back to 2004, the visionary move would have been to patch up the buildings a bit and turn Fortress into a limited access backcountry skiing/cat skiing/hiking resort. It's managed well enough doing just day-trip cat skiing, but most cat-ski lodges charge big bucks to house and feed you, too.

Great write up. A version should go in the Edwards thread on the main page. ME isn't very well covered, and he'll be a very debatable topic the next decade.