Virgin Power Appreciation Society

Kimberley, BC, Canada

From studying the piste maps, you could be forgiven for thinking that Kimberley isn't going to be as interesting as Panorama if you like steeps and double-black diamond runs. So when we were told Panorama was boring (which it isn't), we had even less expectations of Kimberley.

Our first day was met with a reasonable dumping of 10-15cm of snow, which made most of the runs easy going, although it was hard stuff underneath. Our first explorations were off the Easter Triple chair over on the right, which can be easy to miss if you pick the wrong feeder run. We picked off a slope off the right hand side, and dropped down to the Tamarack chair. Riding this chair, there wasn't a single track on the piste below us, and as we got closer to the top we were willing the old double chair onwards at twice the speed.

We got our wish though and were able to chomp up the fresh in a quick dash to the bottom so we could do it all again. Of course, by the time we were riding back up, many more had had the same idea, and it was mostly tracked out. We looked elsewhere.

We made a couple of runs over towards Buckhorn chair, but it wasn't as good as the stuff off Tamarack, so after a pit stop for lunch we all headed back over that way.

The day got better in the late afternoon when myself and one of my friends found a slope of untouched powder. We did the run about 4 times and ours were the only tracks that we came across. Such finds are stored away for future reference, but I'm not storing the information here. :)

The next day was sunny and there was little fresh powder to be found. We went through the trees near Tamarack and came out on a huge mogul field with 4ft bumps that weren't very forgiving. Searching all over, even in our little spot, yielded no results for powder, so we played on the piste and did a couple of runs through the park.

Kimberley is a good place, and for beginners and intermediates it has masses of stuff to try. For experts it's less challenging as the double blacks are all very short lived, but depending on the state of the snow some runs will certainly make you work.

Kimberley town is a charming place, and is touted as having a Bavarian flavour. I've not been to Bavaria, but I have been to Austria and Switzerland and there's certainly an element of Euro-Alpine feel in Kimberely. We came across a strange restaurant that had a baffling mixture of antiquities and collections crammed into every little space. Not all Germanic homes are like this, but it made for an interesting dining experience, right alongside the very non-Bavarian Jack Daniels Sirloin. Yum!