B.C.'s Cypress Mountain is Olympics bound
Ski area's serious expansion almost doubles its super terrain
Mike Kane / P-ICanadian Olympic aerial ski jumper Deidra Dionne of Red Deer, Alberta, takes flight at one of the new Olympic competition areas at Cypress Mountain.
By GREG JOHNSTON
P-I REPORTER
The rap on this small ski area tucked into Vancouver's North Shore Mountains is all about limited though excellent terrain, massive humanity and protracted lift lines.
But I'm looking down beyond my boots and snowboard at the black diamond run called First Sun while riding Cypress Mountain's newly relocated Raven Ridge quad, and there are only two sets of tracks down a blanket of deep, fresh white.
I realize this is brand new terrain opened just this winter, it's a Thursday afternoon and, between the thick fog and falling snow, visibility is less than the distance I can huck a wet snowball.
But this is ridiculous. There is no line at the lift. There are no skiers in sight -- despite a mountain of fresh snow.
We hop off the lift and traverse back under its cables, then launch a fall line run straight down Black Mountain.
A snowboard class receives instruction. (January 24, 2008)
Credit: Mike Kane/P-I
The depth perception is so bad halfway down that I reach up and shove my frosty goggles onto my head without stopping. And this stuff isn't really powder, it's not that light and not that dry. But we score clean tracks 90 percent of the way and it's knee-deep, magical and mesmerizing, like riding an orca on a tidal surge.
We reach the bottom huffing, puffing and grinning.
Cypress Mountain doesn't seem so small anymore, and on this day and on these runs at least, it's not crowded at all.
Two years before it hosts the world and the freestyle skiing and snowboarding events for the 2010 Winter Olympics, Cypress Mountain ski area has a brand new high-speed quad chairlift and nine new runs that boost the total of its terrain by 40 percent, to 1,482 acres. That's not to mention a new superpipe, a huge new lodge under construction and a new snowmaking system that has not been needed this winter of beaucoup snowfall.
"It's always something we've needed to do to reach our full potential," Joffrey Koeman, Cypress' marketing director, says later over a couple pints at the area's pub, Growlies. "This is the first expansion of terrain on the North Shore in 20 years. The great thing is, we were skiing today at 1 o'clock and we were getting fresh tracks down one of our new runs!"
Cypress Mountain is one of three ski areas on the North Shore, just a half-hour from downtown Vancouver on a good traffic day. A short skip to the east is Grouse Mountain, and a hop farther east is Mount Seymour. All three offer decent terrain -- although nothing in the epic style of Whistler -- and all three are fun, friendly areas. But the terrain at Cypress has always been considered the best by most locals, and the new topography only entrenches that reputation.
"It's the best skiing in Vancouver," says Rio DeLeen, a Snohomish native but longtime resident of Canada's busy West Coast metropolis. "This is the best mountain of all three of them. I can come up here and ski for four hours and go back home and have time to do housework, whatever. What's so nice is that from the top, you can see the whole city when the weather is clear. There's not a prettier view in the whole city."
We'll have to take her word for it. These mountains are part of British Columbia's Coast Range, and the weather is the same as we get in the Cascades -- wet storms and wrestling winds that blow in from the Pacific.
Cypress actually is spread over two mountains, on leased land inside B.C.'s expansive Cypress Provincial Park. On the west is 3,940-foot Black Mountain and all the new terrain; on the east are the slopes of 4,720-foot Mount Strachan. The new high-speed Lion's Express quad climbs the face of Mount Strachan and replaces a fixed-grip quad that was relocated to the new terrain on Black Mountain and renamed the Raven Ridge quad.
Olympic aerial ski coach Daniel Murphy uses a radar gun to clock the speed of athletes. (January 24, 2008)
Credit: Mike Kane/P-I
"Being in such an urban area, a huge portion of our skiers is beginners," Koeman said. "It made sense to put the high-speed quad over there on our bread-and-butter runs, and put a fixed-grip chair over the new black diamond terrain."
All of the runs in the new Raven area -- named for a maniacal raven known to steal windshield wiper blades from cars in the nearby lot -- are rated blue and black (intermediate and advanced).
On our recent visit, the Canadian and Australian national freestyle teams were training on the Olympics venues, and by chance I ran into Dale Begg-Smith, a moguls skier of some fame on the Australian team. He won gold at the Turin Olympics, and is one of the best in the world at the joint-jarring event.
He approached me to ask if the Raven Ridge chair had opened yet, which gave me the opportunity to buttonhole him about Cypress and the new terrain.
"We've been here two weeks," he said. "It's great, a lot of new terrain, good terrain. I was up there yesterday."
I asked if he'd gotten into the deep stuff and he said he had but "it was a bit snoggy; visibility wasn't so good."
I took snoggy to mean a combination of snow and fog, and it sure was that.
Then he politely said he had to get busy and left.
Later I learned that, with his brother, also a freestyle skier, he apparently operates a lucrative IT business that some have associated with browser-hijackers and spyware. Some bloggers call him a "spam king." Seemed a nice enough bloke to me.
Later I climbed on the new Lion's Express quad with a father and son, David and Toby Galloway, late of London town. Two months ago, Toby, a plumber, moved to Vancouver. He said he'd been to Cypress twice now and that he had indeed sampled the new terrain.
"It was amazing," he said. "There's a run when you come off the chair and go left, it's a brilliant natural bowl, like a natural halfpipe. Then you can go through the trees and there are some nice dropoffs where you can get good air. It's really beautiful."
Except for the two blue runs -- Benny's and Crazy Raven, which traverse around each side of the new terrain -- all the runs there are single and double black diamond "fall line" runs that plunge straight down the mountain. That's unusual for the North Shore ski areas, which, probably because they lack massive vertical descent, tend to have runs that are lengthened by traversing across the slopes.
"They're really straight-down runs where you're keeping to the fall line all the way down," said Koeman. "I don't see that anywhere else on the North Shore. What we pride ourselves on is the terrain. If you're a skier who wants a challenge, you come here."
I would agree, to an extent. But it seems like Cypress overrates its runs a bit. Some of the single black diamond runs here would be blues at other areas, and some of the double blacks would be single blacks.
At the same time, the new terrain is fast and sweet, and you can find runs on both mountains that will throw gas on your fire.
The new topography and infrastructure, part of a $25 million upgrade, are tangible improvements for skiers and riders and come as no surprise to anyone familiar with ski areas across the Northwest, particularly considering the upcoming international festivities.
Cypress, you see, is owned by CNL Income Properties Inc. and operated by Boyne USA and the Kircher family, which also owns and operates Crystal Mountain and now also operates The Summit at Snoqualmie in partnership with CNL. Boyne and its West Coast boss, John Kircher, are known for perpetual expansion and improvement.
In addition, the Vancouver Organizing Committee -- VANOC, as it's called -- is paying additional Canadian millions for the construction of the Olympic venues, all of which are now in place. These include freestyle skiing aerials and moguls venues, as well as the snowboard halfpipe, and snowboard parallel giant slalom and snowboard and ski cross venues.
The first big competition on these courses will be FIS World Cup freestyle aerials and moguls events on Feb. 9-10.
"I can't tell you how excited everyone is about this," Koeman said. "It's going to be the biggest international competition on the North Shore maybe ever."
The Canadian national halfpipe and boardercross championships will be contested April 2-6.
Should be excellent tune-ups for a once little ski area about to take the international center stage.
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