Once again, we headed to Canada for our annual four-day cat skiing trip to Chatter Creek Mountain Lodges. This year, we were a herd—10 of us affectionately known as the Salt Lake gang or, less affectionately, as the Hanson group. The cast is shown below in Cast of Characters.

Actually, we were only 9. At the last moment, Gene Myers had to cancel because of an injured shoulder. He was much missed.

Like last year, we added a trip to Revelstoke Mountain Resort where we bagged two days of great skiing. We arrived in Calgary on Tue. Jan. 27 and drove our 2-SUV caravan to Golden, B.C. On Wed. Jan. 28, we continued to Revelstoke, and skied Tue. and Wed., and drove back to Golden, Wed. night, Jan. 29.

On Fri. Jan 30, most of us skied at Kicking Horse Ski Resort until about 1pm, then we all flew via helicopter into Chatter Creek later that afternoon. Maylee’s Donald Heliport Picasa album reveals the details of the inbound trip.

The conditions at Chatter Creek were very good, but not as good as our 2006 and 2008 tours. The visibility and conditions in the alpine were suboptimal and the avalanche danger was high, so we skied mostly in the trees or just above tree line. The photos below were taken on Sat. Feb. 1, our second day of skiing.

Click on the thumbnails to reach the corresponding pages, which include navigation links to walk through the photos in the order shown below. These photos were taken by Dylan Page (one of Chatter Creek’s resident photographers).

One of unexpected highlights of the trip was staying at Home Lodge, run by Lynn Heaton, for our three nights in Golden. There are pictures of this fantastic place and photos from Revelstoke and Chatter Creek in these Picasa web albums by Maylee Noah and Tom Gerner. (These links open in new windows.)

Revelstoke & Chatter Creek (Tom Gerner)
Revelstoke, Home Lodge, Donald Heliport, Chatter Creek (Maylee Noah)