Canada

| CANADA

Canada is home to more than a million acres of pristine wilderness. Its vast inventory of jagged peaks, U-shaped valleys, thick green forests, and braided streams of milky glacier water remind one of Switzerland, but on a grander scale and with far less development. Much like Alaska, the western provinces are littered with snowy summits as far as the eye can see. In winter they are split vertically with untracked lines of the kind that routinely grace the covers of ski magazines (before they went extinct). Huge expanses of old-growth forest lie at their feet, practically begging to be traversed by skiers on skins. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of mineral-laden turquoise lakes frozen white in winter mark the boundaries between the forest and the alpine. It is a landscape of mind-bending beauty. It’s climate is cold and dry (outside of the Coast Mountains at least), and wintertime precipitation is reliably heavy. The only major drawback to backcountry skiing in Canada, if there is one, is the lack of infrastructure, as there are few major airports or population centers amidst the high peaks of the western provinces. For some, this is a good thing. For the rest of us, it can be rather prohibitive. Below are a few of the more well known (i.e.: accessible) lines in Canada. This is by no means an exhaustive list; it would take more than a lifetime to ski and document all the biggest lines in Canada. But one has to start somewhere.