Resort suggestions: BC interior/Alberta

LL no real village and on snow accom. I would suggest Silver Star, Sunpeaks or Fernie for your group. All have excellent facillities for children and have extra things you can do as a family if you don't want to 'just ski'.

 

For something a bit different try Castle Mt in Alberta, theres a village on the hill, although its quite small, but the mountain is great, lots of steeps and uncrowded and cheap.
The other place id reccommend would be going to Whitefish in Montana, its only about a hr drive from the border, has a great village on the mountain and a cool little town, great snow and terrain to.

 

Just make sure its at the resort, the town of Fernie is a few km away

 

Stayed at Snow Creek Lodge Fernie in Feb this year. Great location with genuine ski in/out.
Cold but great snow.

 

Add Panorama to the list. Strong suite of advanced terrain, nice village. Kids will love the huge outdoor pool/waterslide complex. Views are spectacular, snow is dry. Snow can be chancy some years but March is premium for base accumulation. Best accessed from Calgary, a bit under 3 hr drive in average conditions.

 

Has anyone mentioned Sunshine yet from what I remember there is a ski in / ski out hotel. Can't remember much else but the gondola ride up from the car park and you get to ski in Alberta and BC.

 

Don't forget the "Boycott Sunshine"' campaine after the atrocious treatment of their ski patrol last year.
I for one will never ski there again.
As mentioned already Castle Mtn is a great family area in the same region that would tick all your boxes.

 

There is only a single hotel at Sunshine - no village. See http://www.skibanff.com/sunshine-village.

 

Kicking Horse has a justly deserved reputation for its extreme steeps and chutes and sidecountry. What is less known is it's quite easy for a mixed group of intermediate, advanced and expert riders to enjoy it together. The top-to-bottom easy trail ("It's a Ten") does several large zigzags across the face of the mountain, passing the runout of all 3 inbounds bowls as it goes. Once the party understands where the 3 key meeting points are, they can split up at the top of the gondola and take their route of choice to get there. There are about 100 marked chutes that drop into these 3 bowls alone, so the steeps junkies can get their freak on and still meet up a third of the way down with those who skied a much gentler line through the tiny trees in Crystal Bowl. From there down there are fall-line bump and groomed runs that allow all of the group to do what they want. These runs are LONG. Plenty of vert up in the bowl/chute zone above treeline, more than 1200 ft in most cases, yet you're only a third of the way back to the gondola at this point. If you do it right, you can have plenty of time to ski with spouse or friends who are a lower ability level and yet still hit the big terrain the Horse is famous for.

The village at KH is small but growing, plenty of nice slopeside condos and a few B&B type lodges. Condo is probably the best way to go as you'll get bored if you have to eat out each night for a week - not that many choices. Weekends get crowded as half of Calgary hits the road. Suggest you arrive midweek and learn the basic mountain layout so you can keep in front of the crowd by the time the weekend rolls around.

 

I would not head to KH with the young ones until there is more infrastructure there. Just my thoughts. We have an 8 and 3 year old.

 

Big Sky Montana gets a huge tick for me. We did it this year in late January/early February and it was COLD so I doubt very much that you'll have problems in March. Fernie was actually our old favourite until Big Sky stole the top place on the list so you can't go wrong with that choice either.

If you want Ski in/Ski out just be careful what you choose as both of them have a broad range of accomodation from on slope, just off slope and downtown. Most of the condo's at both require a little bit hiking or the bus service and of course the closer you get to the lifts the more costly they are. The transport around Big Sky was brilliant so I doubt you'd have any problems.

The amount of terrain at Big Sky is massive especially when you include Moonlight Basin (worh a visit if you like trees) and if you have people with varied skill levels you can't go wrong. The only thing you have to be mindful of is that many of Big Sky's blues are borderline blacks at most other resorts so the lower level skier can find it a little intimidating and it's worth getting someone to show you a few hidden areas that cater extremely well for the green skier but are not in the usual front slopes/near to home location.

The other huge bonus with Big Sky is that it's not far from Yellowstone Park which is worth a visit.

if you have the time to read it, have a look at the trip report I posted earlier this year:

https://www.ski.com.au/xf/posts/1259625

And finally, if you're looking for a great all round package don't ignore Sun Peaks. It may not have the extreme terrain of most other resorts but it's pretty big and the village is one of the best around in my opinion.

 

Hands down KH for me. I go over there at least one day a season. Paradise if you're an expert.

 

Don't forget little old Kimberley... Great skiing, empty runs most of the time, way cheaper than other resorts and definitely something for everyone. Great views, nice weather.......

 

Tough call given early March - sometimes you can fluke a good dump around this time, but a lot of the BC interior resorts are starting to wind down and temps will start to warm up.

Just be wary of the fact that a lot of the BC interior & Alberta resorts don't get a lot of average annual snowfall (Banff resorts in particular).

Revelstoke would be awesome but not the most kid-friendly place.

What about Red & Whitewater?

Castle Mtn looks pretty good too although a long way from anything (like Fernie).

Kicking Horse having been there was awesome and offers true ski in / ski out, would probably still be pretty good early March as well.

 

Big White and Red Mountain are chalk and cheese. One is all about convenience, high speeds lifts and kids' facilities (Big White), the other is all about the terrain with a great local vibe (Red). Goods skiers should never get bored at Red, but lesser skiers will also have fun. There are not many groomers, but they are a real hoot.

2000m is not a problem for altitude sickness.

 

March is my favourite month of the Canadian ski season: max snow base, milder weather, longer daylight hours, crowds dropping off. Snowpacks generally reach their peak in March, although the shift in shoulder seasons of late means this peak is sometimes happening in early April now. I'm talking about the resorts with decent altitude here - lifted above 2000m - or coastal ones that get plastered all the time, like Mt Washington or Mt Baker or Hemlock. If you're considering the Rockies proper (Banff, Jasper, Kananaskis) then March is as early as I'd consider under most circumstances. They need time to develop good natural base, but they retain everything they get. Finally, March gets mild and you'll need it, Dec-Jan especially are bejeebus cold.

Only a couple of resorts in western Canada stay open past mid April, not because they're the only ones with snow but because they've sucked it up over the years and developed a following and a business model that allows it. Virtually any of the resorts you're interested could easily keep some lifts open into May, but they lose money - Canadians are thoroughly sick of winter by this time and are now all on the golf course.

March might look like late season on the calendar, but it's nothing like the Aussie version of 'late season'.

Oh, and Red has tons of terrain for the expert skier. Trees, steep chutes, cliffs, plenty of vert. Nothing at all like BW (which has high speed lifts and lots of grooming).

 

Why go to Canada, come ski in the California Sunshine, make it Mammoth, great snow, 26 chairs move over 64,000 skiers an hour, almost 1000 metres vertical, over 4,500 skiable acres, skiing from 8,000 to 11,000ft so we have a SEVEN month season at least, every year, last year in March we had over 450 cms. we have already been skiing for two weeks, long range forecast is for over 1000 inches - 25 metres, no funky little village - a town of about 7,000 people with all the facilities you need, a real community. Check out all things Mammoth "Mammoth Ocker"

 

Altitude sickness "might" start to affect you when you stay above 2500m. We spent two months last year living at 2300m with a 3yr old and 6 month old without any problems.

And an interesting little fact is that most commercial jets are pressurized to the equivalent of around 2100m, so your toddlers will have already experienced that altitude on the flight over.

 

I developed a violent headache once at 2600m. I didn't realise what it was at the time, but realised later it was altitude sickness. (That's about 8500 ft if you're doing a conversion). Given that NSW resorts are up to 2000, yoiu shouldn't have a problem.

 

This year sees the opening of the new kids ski school area and the daycare centre. Plus the new tube park. But still.