Welcome to Big Red Cats

Cat skiing and cat boarding at Big Red Cats will satisfy your need for fresh powder, and get you excited for more!  Imagine a ski area about 3 times the size of North America's largest lift-serviced resort, but with a maximum of 36 skiers a day, with qualified guides showing you all the best untracked gladed trees and bowls - all yours for the taking!  With over 450 runs on 8 mountains of varied terrain, you can sign up for one of our separate trips for expert, advanced, or intermediate skiers and riders, and ski and ride with our qualified guides in a group others of a similar ability.

Choose your powder adventure!  Tailor your number of ski days and style of accommodation to suit your desire and your budget.  Book cat skiing only, or we can package your cat skiing day trip with lift passes and lodging at local resorts, or you could choose a luxury lodge with optional private chef and multiple days of fresh pow!  Complete 12-bed lodges, self-catering condos, individual lodge rooms, or cat skiing only; just tell us what you want, and we'll make it happen.

Friends don't let friends ski other people's tracks.

History of Big Red Cats
Written by Administrator    Monday, 31 August 2009 13:47   

thumb_year_1_runsHere is a visual history of Big Red Cats Terrain.  Click through to see all the pics!

 

This is summary History of Big Red Cats.   The pictures show how we have expanded the terrain each year.     The terrain one of the biggest in Canada.   It is about 12 Kilometers long by 12 Kilometers wide.   Spread out over 7 mountains and well over 400 runs

Year 1.   We started with 1 Main mountain Mt Neptune  - and about 70 runs.    Great 1st year.    We learned alot and had some great skiing.   We had Roddy, Justin, and Kieren were the main guides.   Richard did most of the driving.    We recieved about 1.3 meters of snow on the 5th of November.   The first day of operations with guests was December 26th by the end of the winter we had about 3m on the ground.   Our plan was to run just one cat - but the ski vermont guys said that they would come if there was 2 cats - so we built a 2nd cabin for our 2nd snowcat.    Kauri and I finished cutting the infamous Spruce forest road - just as the big dump came in early November.    After chainsawing all day it has snowed about 40cm of fresh powder during the day whilst we were cutting - on the ATV on the way home we were getting faceshots the whole way - we thought that we were going to get stuck out in the storm....

Year 1 runs:

year_1_runs

Year 2 - added 2 more mountain for a total of 3 main mountains.    Huge addition of new terrain.   Purchased a 3rd snowcat.    Justin, stu, Kieren, Kauri, and Jim were the main guides.    We really enjoyed skiing the bigger open bowls in Plutonic a Neptune bowl for the 1st time.      We opened Pluto and much of Mt Crow.     We had a great year of epic powder and good stability with only 1 small drought.

Year 2 runs.

year_2_runs

Year 3.   We added the Mackie zone.    Some great skiing.   We had our worst avalanche year.  Snowpack in our area was the most unstable that it had been in about 30 years.    Our main Guides were Jim, Justin, Kieren, Ken, Mo.     In some ways this was are toughest year.   We had our most unstable snowpack - and our 1st and only full avalache burial.     The guide team did not work as well as we had hoped - and we were still not using Mackie to it potentail.    We had the most ever breakdowns of our snowcats.    However we still got through the year and had some great skiing and riding.

Year 3 runs

year_3_runs

Year 4.   This was our best year yet.    The only negative was the warm up and dry spell in Late jan and early Feb.   We added our 5th mountain - Mt Venus.   We also vastly inproved the snowroad structure making the snowcat road network that much faster.     All the team worked really well together.   We were super lucky to have Peter, Rob, Laura, Lee, Ari, Matt, Seb, Kauri, and Pete helping us on the guiding side.   Bill, Dana, Rich, and Greg did most of the driving.    We had our best mechanical year with only 1 proablem that effected guests in the entire season (this was on the last day of operation).   Good job Rich!    We really used the mackie Zone to its fullest - and discovered all the great lines and features in this area.

Year 4 runs

year_4_runs

Year 5.   2009/10  doing our biggest ever expansion of terrain - adding 2 new mountains and about 100 news runs.    For this winter we also have another Pisten bully 300, a newer 24 seat bus, a new welcome centre, and the Big Red Lodge at Red.

Year 5 runs:

year_5_runs