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TRAVERSE of the VALHALLAS by SKI – Mulvey Basin to Shannon Creek The Valhalla traverse is the ultimate West Kootenay traverse. Remote and committing, this rewarding ski traverse through Valhalla Provincial Park is a guided tour offered by Summit Mountain … Continue reading →

END THE PHONE-BASED CHILDHOOD NOW  The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development. By Jonathan Haidt Photographs by Maggie Shannon March 13, 2024 Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now … Continue reading →

INSECTS Where the Trans Canada Highway penetrates the Selkirk Mountains, at Glacier, tourists now wander the trails barelegged and otherwise unprotected, little suspecting that Glacier was once teeming with mosquitoes. In 1955, Whipple alit from the train and was attacked … Continue reading →

Photographer Douglas Noblet likes to suffer. In 2016, the Nelson, British Columbia native helped organize a team of skiers, including Steve Senecal from Nelson, BC, and Mark Grist, Nick Matwyk, and Lena Rowat from Vancouver, to ski traverse the Selkirk … Continue reading →

THE MOST AMBITIOUS SKI TRAVERSE EVER March 22, 2016 KOOTENAY MOUNTAIN CULTURE magazine  When four ski mountaineers decided to travel 2,015 kilometres of the Coast Mountain Range, from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Skagway, Alaska, they knew the massive undertaking would … Continue reading →

The Monashees have long been considered the holy grail of the grand traverses. On May 7, 2022, Douglas Noblet, Stephen Senecal, and wildlife biologist Isobel Phoebus completed a 600-kilometre (373-mile) traverse of the entire Monashee Mountains range from Grand Forks … Continue reading →

The longest traverse of all, it runs 320 kilometres (199 miles) along the crest of the Rocky Mountains between Jasper and Alberta’s Wapta Lake in Yoho National Park. First skied in 1967, it has been repeated only a dozen times … Continue reading →

First skied in 1984, it’s very popular. The route travels through the spectacular Premier Range, follows a good line and is reasonably easy to traverse. A short helicopter ride from Valemont takes you to the Gilmour Glacier, avoiding a horrendous … Continue reading →

If you are really ambitious, you could repeat the attempt to link all the grand traverses through the Columbia Mountains starting in McBride in the Northern Cariboos, and ending in Kimberly in the East Kootenay. This complete traverse was skied … Continue reading →

By Dave Quinn, Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine We lean against the airplane windows, flying between the Kootenays and British Columbia’s coast, trying in vain to comprehend the scale of forest removal we see in the landscape below. The ski tour … Continue reading →