Snowcat Skiing
When your fantasy is to ski your own private powder, making run after run in unbroken knee-high to waist-deep snow, you have to go where chairlifts don’t. The ultra rich may splurge on a helicopter to the top, but the “poor man’s heliskiing” is snowcat skiing. Even at half the price, it’s still not exactly slumming, but it does come with a number of other advantages over riding in a chopper.
Snowcats—the vehicles that groom trails—become buses on treads when cat-skiers hitch a ride on the back. Unlike helicopters, they can run in any weather and are inherently safer because they take the peril of winter-mountain flying completely out of the equation. While you won’t ascend as high as helicopters, you typically unload in tree-sheltered areas, instead of barren mountain ridges. It’s the same snow with less avalanche exposure.
Yes, helicopters will get you there faster, but speed comes with its own drawback: no rest in between runs. When heliskiing, you make a long descent and three minutes later you’re at the summit and at it again—exhausting for all but the fittest skiers.
Heliskiing also usually commits you to week-long packages at remote backcountry lodges, mostly in Alaska and Canada. However, snowcat skiing is available by the single day in more accessible places. By combining a day or two of cats with a regular ski trip, you can try it out at many of the world-class ski resorts you might already be visiting.
Steamboat Powdercats, one of the nation’s oldest operators, is 10 miles from Colorado’s Steamboat ski resort, your pick-up point. A maximum of 30 guests a day ski on 10,000 acres that average 500 inches of snow a year. Compare that to sharing a much smaller area with the thousands of skiers at most groomed resorts. (A full-guided day runs $850 with equipment, breakfast, lunch and 8 to 16 runs at 8,000 to 14,000 feet.) Other such top operators include Utah’s Park City Powdercats, Selkirk Powder at Idaho’s Schweitzer Mountain and Purgatory Snowcat Skiing, located at Colorado’s Purgatory ski resort. Utah’s Powder Mountain, Colorado’s Keystone and Vermont’s Sugarbush offer single-ride options that allow you to test the powder at even less expense.
