I know I sound like a huge party pooper raining in on your fictional thread, but yes in my opinion BC has too many ski hills already. Where are we going to build a resort the size of sochi in BC? Yes BC has beautiful mountains that can be skied, but the biggest issue is access will your 5 billion include making the crowsnest, 97 north or 5 north double laned? What about the 30km access road to get to your ski hill.
Look at the east kootenays and all the ski hills that are roughly a 3 hour drive from calgary. You have Fernie, Castle Mountain, Panorama, Kimberley, Kicking Horse, Norquay, Sunshine, Lake Louise which are all destination resorts. How many of them do you think are struggling? Now lets add Jumbo to that list which is going to be half an hour more of a drive than the others. It's an area where people ALREADY have land rights to for heliskiing and you just added another ski hill do an area that has too many for the population base of Calgary.
Lets talk garibaldi, which is the purposed ski hill in Squamish BC, well let me tell you just how well a ski hill will do that is on the same road to Whistler. Especially when it's at a lower elevation, which already struggles with snow and tricky native relationships. Add to the fact that the north shore mountains will offer similar snow conditions and terrain closer to vancouver and at a more affordable rate.
Now for the next big mountain trying to be planned in BC, it's valemount, which is the only one of the three I have mentioned that might happen. But for a major resort to be built you're still going to need a decent local population base in BC, and valemount isn't big enough to support a major hill. Whistler has vancouver, Big White has Kelowna, Whitewater has Nelson and the surrounding towns, Castle has lethbridge. Valemount would be hours away from both Edmonton and prince george.
Having a big mountain and snow isn't enough to have a ski hill in BC. Skier visits are fluctuating here with destination visits lower than 2008. You want me to take 5 billion and build a super resort in bc? I say fuck that. I'll take not 500 million and spread it around the smaller mountains that ACTUALLY support skiers and make skiing affordable for not just the upper middle class. I'll give money ski hills like phoenix mountain, Shames mountain, Mt. Seymour, Mt. Cain, Salmo, Summit Lake, Mount Sima, Manning Park etc. so that they will NEVER have to worry about turning a profit again or if they have enough diesel to run their snow cat that night. These 5 billion dollar resorts is killing our own industry.
Give me 5 million dollars so I can build a t bar that runs on wind in a mountain that is accessible by 2km tour in, and a place to shit indoors. That is what bc needs right now.
Sorry for shitting on your fictional thread, but I've take ski area planning course, I've chatted with development firms and I've helped shape master plans, so I have a wealth of knowledge on this topic. So I take this shit seriously.
