Living in the Spokane/CDA area is like winning the geographic lottery. If you're an active outdoors person, our area is a great homebase for all four seasons' worth of activities. We have so many things at our fingertips, including the Canadian border, which offers some incredible winter adventures like snow cat skiing.
For the past several years, I've been lucky enough to be included with a group from New York who book a private snow cat each March for a three-day cat skiing adventure to Chatter Creek Lodge north of Golden, British Columbia.
The crew I was able to tag along with included my longtime friend from our days on the US Ski Team, Johnny Witt, his friends plastic surgeon Jeffrey Ridha, Robert Zoella and his wife, Andrea (who when she's not ripping the moguls at Killington is flying commercial jumbo jets), and my friend Tommy Frey, a dock builder from Hayden.
Trips up to Chatter Creek never get old, as I'm just as excited each and every time as I was my first. The beauty of the Canadian Rockies, epic snow and insane terrain always makes Chatter Creek a favorite. If the scenery doesn't blow you away, the snow quality and accumulations will!
Chatter Creek is tucked back in the mountains northwest of Golden, and getting there requires a 20-minute heli flight into their base of operations — two massive log lodges and several smaller outbuildings. All of the logs for the buildings were logged from this valley and milled on site because bringing in lumber to this remote area would be too costly.
Our trip was scheduled the first week of March, and upon our arrival it was snowing, as it had been all day. After my crew got settled into our rooms, we made our way into the large dining room where dinner was being served. Throughout the entire meal, the anticipation and excitement was building as each table of skiers listened to their guides' stories about conditions from earlier in the day. In just the two hours that we'd been there, it had already snowed 5 inches and the temps were in the teens.
After an amazing meal of a perfectly cooked pork tenderloin smothered with a huckleberry demiglace, we capped off the dining experience with a crème brulée. Totally stuffed and happy, my buddies and I slid downstairs to the lounge for a nightcap or two.
The Chatter Creek Lounge was buzzing with many of the other guests amped for what was looking to be an epic first day. Photos and videos on the bar's big-screen from the previous day's adventures kept the vibe alive, while the pool table and shotz ski were in high demand. Being this wasn't my first rodeo at Chatter Creek, I knew best not to come out of the gate too hard on the first night in the lodge bar; by 10 pm I threw in the towel. On my way to my room, I took a quick look outside: It had snowed almost a foot.
About 2:30 am, the sound of the wind woke me. I looked out the window, and the snowstorm had picked up significantly through the night. The four snowcats parked outside our window were pretty much completely covered.
By daybreak, the snowstorm had let up, leaving us with 23 inches of fresh. At breakfast, our guide Matt spoke about many of the hazards that much snow with wind can bring. Beyond avalanche danger and tree wells, he mentioned how that much snow, that quickly, along with wind can be tricky and limiting of where we can and cannot ski. Typically when the avy hazards increase and there's wind loaded snow, you stay in the trees on lower-angle slopes to give the snowpack some time to bond and settle.
After breakfast, each of the four different cat skiing groups split up, and our guides put us through the mandatory avalanche and transceiver training before we ventured out. After our training we loaded up into our snowcat and headed up the mountain where we planned to spend the day tree skiing low-angle runs until stability increased.
Sometimes that much snow is too much snow, especially on low-angle slopes. The challenge is that it's extremely hard to get up enough speed to keep moving. Matt would set a track, and then one by one the next person would go, following in the guide's track until you had enough speed/momentum to venture out of the tracks to make a few turns in the bottomless powder. Weighing in at 215 pounds, I was struggling as I would go right to the bottom and lose just about all my speed. Once you made it down to the guide, the next person would go as you don't want to load the slope with too many people skiing at one time.
Thankfully by noon the air temps were warming up a bit, and the snow in the trees was settling out. The rest of the day was much more enjoyable as our skis weren't diving in so deep. Everybody in my group was pretty smoked after a hard but fun day, making those cold beers back at the cat that much more rewarding. That 15-minute ride back to the lodge went fast.
Day 2 weather and conditions... PERFECT! Avy hazards dropped somewhat, and the snow had settled, so we were going to venture into some more open and slightly steeper terrain.
The sun was out, and our crew was fully recharged. The three other cats went their separate ways, as Matt directs ours up one of Chatters' dozens of cat roads to one of their more legendary runs, the Enchanted Forest, which takes you through an old forest fire burn.
What makes this run so special is that it's wide open with only burnt trees that have no branches. The snow is always consistent, because there's no tree branches that drop their snow when the air warms up. (As loaded branches get heavier, they bend, dumping the snow onto the slope creating "Tree Bombs" that are hard spots or bumps where it freezes.)
We spent part of our morning skiing some fun runs through the Enchanted Forest. There were lots of hooting and hollering going down as this is what powder skiers dream about.
Over the course of the next two days, our guide, Matt, took us to some amazing zones. We skied all sorts of terrain, from wide-open glacier type skiing, to steep, perfectly spaced gladed trees where your every turn you'd sink down and be submerged into the White Room, and then, like a ground hog you'd pop your head out navigating your next few turns through the trees.
Another one of my favorite runs was down the well-known Chatter Creek Pillow Lines, which is a huge boulder field covered in snow. The best way to describe it, is that it's like riding a Bucking Bronc — you jump in and hang on for the ride of your life! The objective is to get air off the rocks, land, ski and repeat all the way down this 800-foot vertical roller coaster. You can also ski around the boulders, but that's not nearly as exciting.
If you love to ski powder and you've never experienced snow cat skiing, I highly recommend you make it happen before you aren't physically able to go. If you're a skier or snowboarder, this is a bucket list item. Because of its popularity, you'll possibly need to plan a year or two ahead; they're usually booked out. A great thing to do is get on their wait list as guests periodically cancel because of one thing or another. This is usually last minute, so you need to be ready.
Don't wait another year. Life is short, make yourself happy! ♦
Bob Legasa has been a Snowlander contributor since 1994. He's also a Hayden-based independent videographer, TV producer and snowsports event promoter with his Freeride Media company.
