Kimberley Alpine Resort (Kimberley)

Member Name: Vivien

Product:	Kimberley
Date:	07/02/01 (861 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No lift lines and slopes to your self, friendly locals

Disadvantages: no night life, and very quiet

Kimberley markets itself as the Bavarian City of the Rockies. It boasts a population of just 7000 people and located at 3663 ft / 1100m it is also the highest city in Canada. It was named after the famous South African mining town in the hope that it would be just as successful .
The "Kimberley Alpine Ski Resort" is about 3km uphill from the town centre and it was here I stayed on a two week holiday in January 2001. By booking early and going off season I managed to buy a holiday for two, including flights, insurance, lessons and the hotel for the incredible price of £900

Getting there
We booked with Inghams and flew on a 9 hour flight from Manchester to Calgary International Airport. We then had a coach journey of 5 hours which was routed through the spectacular scenery of the Banff National Park and then the Kooteney National Park in the Canadian Rockies.

The Hotel
We had chosen to Stay at the Trickle Creek Hotel, which is part of the Marriott group and we had nothing at all to complain about. Ours was one of the smallest rooms and still included a fully equipped kitchen with dishwasher, TV, 2 sofas, gigantic bed, bathroom and a balcony with a view over the nursery slopes and pool. Coffee and microwaveable popcorn was left as a courtesy and the best feature was a complimentary grocery shopping service. Breakfast was included every day, hot chocolate and coffee were freely available in the lounge all day long and on weekday evenings a light snack was also available. There was a very small gym with just 3 or 4 machines and a great outdoor pool and two outdoor hot tubs. Under floor heating around the pool made dashing to and from the changing room a lot more comfortable.

The Skiing
Unfortunately while we where visiting, the whole of the Canadian Rockies were having a poor season with much less snow than normal. As a result of this a lot of the hardest Black Diamond runs were closed and the lift tickets had been
reduced from $45 to $37. This was almost a bonus for me as I probably wouldn't have used most of the shut runs anyway.
Beginners learned on two slopes, serviced by a magic carpet and two drag lifts. These nursery slopes were completely separate from the others so there was less chance of being scared by speeding show offs. Some beginners were put off by the steepness of the second nursery slope. It also seemed a huge leap for some of them to graduate to the main ski area.

Due to the resorts recent expansions the main base area had been lowered and where many runs had finished at the original base only one run ended up at the new base. This run also narrowed to go over a bridge. As a result of this the bridge was often congested and very icy. The resort does have plans to demolish the original base buildings and create new runs down to the high speed Quad chair however nothing is finalised yet and the congestion will continue to be a major problem.

On the positive side the resort is mainly very quiet. I never queued for a lift in the two weeks, and often had runs all to myself.

Skiing in the Easter Bowl we found deeper snow and this is the area which normally is full of powder.

The resort has a group of volunteer ski hosts who act as guides, tell you local information and reasons behind the names of the runs. I went out with these a few times and their knowledge led us to the quietest and better conditioned runs.They meet at 0930 and 1330 daily.

Night skiing is available and the resort has the longest lit run in Canada. This was mainly used by the locals as most of the tourists were tired out by normal lift closing time.It cost $15 an evening.

While we were staying at Kimberly the resort was being used as the base for the Australian para Olympic team . The special world cup is held at Kimberly, and it was awe inspiring watching the one or even no legged athletes race past. Even more stunning were the sla
lom racing blind skiers who trusted their guides walkie talkie instructions.

The Ski School
The ski school was organised in a very peculiar way. We thought we had booked a six day course, but it turned out that we were issued 12 tickets for twelve group lessons. This meant that during the holiday I had 8 different teachers in classes as small as just me up to about 8 people. For the first few days a ski off was held before each lesson and then a group of about 4 people settled to a regular class. Six of my instructors were excellent and two I didn?t click with at all.A big disadvantage of this system was a lack of continuity and repetitiveness of certain lessons. The only advantage was being able to take mornings or afternoons off from the lessons and not loose out on any instruction.

Apres Ski
Kimberley was a very quiet place and there was hardly any night life. the bars down town were cheep and included free pool, darts and table football but often we would be the only people in a bar. We even tried the Canadian legion in an attempt to mingle with locals, there was a handful of people there but the place shut each night at 7pm !
5 pin and 10 pin bowling were located in the town and also a small cinema with one choice of film each week.
We did have two great evenings out watching the local ice hockey team, the Kimberley Dynamiters. The atmosphere created by the 600 or so spectators was terrific, the standard of play was pretty good and at $9 a ticket a cheap night out. Beware, spot prizes were awarded for the dirtiest car in the car park, or for the car with the baldest tires.

Families with teenage children were the least well catered for and many people I spoke to mentioned that there kids were very bored in the evenings.

The shopping street was decked with a Bavarian theme in the 1970`s and was not to my taste. It boasted the largest cuckoo clock in the world, and if you want a laugh put a quarter in the clock a
nd watch Hans the beer drinking yodeller perform for a few minutes.We visited the shops on a Saturday and the place was like a ghostly film set, with no one about.There were a few good gift shops, a couple of sell everything hardware stores and several restaurants.The town has two good supermarkets.

Dining
there is some great dining in Kimberley and our favourite restaurant was The Bauern Haus. This was housed in a 350 year old barn imported from Germany, and is probably one of the oldest buildings in Canada.The food and service was excellent. Many of the down town restaurants will shuttle you to and from the ski hill and all had good reports.A couple of places will also deliver food to your Hotel.
At the base level of the ski hill where a couple of places to buy bar snacks and Kelseys, a Canadian grill was located in the Marriott hotel.

Getting about
A shuttle bus ran between the hill and the town and cost $2 per trip. Sun, Mon and Tuesday the last bus was at an early 7.30pm the other nights it was 11.30pm. There were also two taxis which were operated by the same company as the shuttle bus. This cost about $8 each way. Other than hiring a car there was no other public transport in or out of Kimberley, apart from a greyhound bus which went at 5.30am each day.

Summary: