[le calmar]

I have never skied in the Rockies (or whatever the BC part is called). But I skied a few times in the Alps and it struck me how high the snow line is. For this very reason, even though mountains are much bigger than in Quebec, I didn't feel like there was much of a difference in the actual snow-covered prominence in the Alps vs the tallest mountains in Quebec and the US Northeast. It took longer to go down the mountain from the summit to the very bottom of the slopes (altitude at the bottom is usually 1,000 m to 1,500 m), but it probably didn't take more than an extra 10 min to do so. Many ski resorts in the Alps have lower or comparable prominence to mountains in QC/US Northeast.

I always thought that downplaying the skiing conditions out East was a bit of an exaggeration, at least coming from my friends in Europe. It is true that the difference is major with the largest, highest ski resorts though (most ski resorts in BC and AB seem to be huge, contrarily to the Alps where they coexist with many smaller resorts).

Edit: Just noticed my post was moved from the Statistics thread to here, fair enough!

Edit 2: Looking back at the first posts in this thread, I must say that the one thing the largest mountains out East lack is the vast expanses above the tree line without any obstacle.