Shames March 10, 2009
3/15/09
1814
1
Shames Mountain is a little hole in the wall near Terrace BC. This obscure little hills averages 12 meters (approximately 40 feet) of snowfall a year. Not a big deal in itself. I live in the Coast Mountains in South West British Columbia where that's considered a reasonable snow fall and four meter snow packs are the norm.
I'm a bit jaded though and have had the good fortune of having toured and skied big terrain in North America (travels through my home province of British Columbia, visiting the Canadian Rockies, touring in the Selkirks etc.). However, this resort serving a population of about 30 to 40,000 people (if one were to be generous) is smack-dab in the middle of the most stunning readily accessible terrain I've ever had the fortune of visiting.
To give one a sense of scale, the surrounding mountains are "only" about 1800m to 2000m high. Shames' base area elevation is at about 700m and extends to about 1100m. The resort area is 144 acres and occupies less then 10% of their huge 8,730 acres of tenure. To put that number into perspective, Whistler/Blackcomb's total lift-served area is 8,171 acres; Vail has 5,289 acres of lift-served terrain. Having said that, Shames is hardly Whistler/Blackcomb or Vail. Many might say that is a good thing.
From The Dome (1440m) you can look W to an endless series of bowls. The smallest bowl in the background is Thunder Bowl, which is what we skied today. Thunder Bowl is about the size of Flute Bowl (which is a large'ish sized bowl by Whistler standards. Geronimo Bowl is twice the size of Thunder and Super Bowl is twice as big as Geronimo. I counted 12 named bowls in the tenured area and another 9 bowls off the tenured area dropping back to the ski-hill access road. A busy day in Shames sees about a 100 skiers; the math is pretty staggering.
More pictures on TGR forums - the panoramas violate the 800 px limit here
I'm a bit jaded though and have had the good fortune of having toured and skied big terrain in North America (travels through my home province of British Columbia, visiting the Canadian Rockies, touring in the Selkirks etc.). However, this resort serving a population of about 30 to 40,000 people (if one were to be generous) is smack-dab in the middle of the most stunning readily accessible terrain I've ever had the fortune of visiting.
To give one a sense of scale, the surrounding mountains are "only" about 1800m to 2000m high. Shames' base area elevation is at about 700m and extends to about 1100m. The resort area is 144 acres and occupies less then 10% of their huge 8,730 acres of tenure. To put that number into perspective, Whistler/Blackcomb's total lift-served area is 8,171 acres; Vail has 5,289 acres of lift-served terrain. Having said that, Shames is hardly Whistler/Blackcomb or Vail. Many might say that is a good thing.
From The Dome (1440m) you can look W to an endless series of bowls. The smallest bowl in the background is Thunder Bowl, which is what we skied today. Thunder Bowl is about the size of Flute Bowl (which is a large'ish sized bowl by Whistler standards. Geronimo Bowl is twice the size of Thunder and Super Bowl is twice as big as Geronimo. I counted 12 named bowls in the tenured area and another 9 bowls off the tenured area dropping back to the ski-hill access road. A busy day in Shames sees about a 100 skiers; the math is pretty staggering.
More pictures on TGR forums - the panoramas violate the 800 px limit here
great shots and looks like nice terrain! I've always wanted to go to terrace and smithers. Way to get after it!
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