Shames Mountain is located west of Terrace, BC at the end of a valley hanging above Highway 16 and the Skeena River. It includes a Mueller double chair, Tbar, handle tow, and a couple of skier service buildings for cafeteria and equipment rental. Its location in the Coast Mountains lends itself to extensive backcountry touring and access.
Since becoming a community co-0p in 2011, General Manager Christian Treberge estimates there has been about $850,000 hard dollars invested into capital improvements. This has included building renovations, power upgrades, and overall improvements. An estimated additional $650,000 in contributions and volunteer time puts total investment over $1.5 million. Impressive, but not surprising, for an engaged community like Terrace.
One of its clever ideas was adding a mascot character to measure the height of kids for the lift. Many young kids in Terrace measure themselves each year against this character. Best of all for Shames, a local board shop call Ruins agreed to sponsor the sign if they could used their shop mascot character.
My Mountain Coop is the ownership structure for Shames Mountain that was introduced in 2011 as Canada’s first non-profit community service ski co-operative. Shames is also in the midst of a fundraising drive for a new groomer.
Shames has a TBar in its sub alpine terrain that accesses glades and some long beautiful fall line bump runs…though GM Christian Theberge prefers to take air over the bumps rather than ride around them 🙂 The backcountry access from this point seems limitless.
The Tbar has a warming hut, and its own generator for power.
As part of the schools programme, lessons are mandatory, and children ski through brushes on the tow to divide into ability levels. Shames has 3 ski and 3 snowboard full time instructors and uses a day rate for instructors to assist recruiting and retention, rather than hourly.
The rental shop sits adjacent to the cafeteria and skier services building…which was the daylodge at the original Terrace ski area called Kitsumkalum. Christian says it was cut into four, and moved to its current location.
Great Idea: Shames posts SIS (Snow Immersion Safety / Treewell) information on its lift towers.
Cody (grooming), Christian (GM), and Robin (maintenance) are all keen skiers and riders. Each were itching to get riding as soon as CWSAA stopped asking questions.
This was Cody’s first snow road…an impressive accomplishment. It acts as a collector trail for gladed runs skiers right off the Tbar. A road does not exist here in summer, so it takes snow, expertise, and time to build it up.
We were told that this electric Tesla is the first one in North West BC. The ski rack looks good on it.
Great idea: Shames recently added a small generator into its primary generator room. It runs overnight and on closed days, and cut the fuel consumption of the primary generator by half. The lodge and chairlift is powered by a 250 kilowatt generator.
This old Bombardier is still used during the summer for mountain access.
The Shames maintenance shop houses its BR 350.
Water is taken in from the creek before going through a filtration process.
Water and wastewater are managed by Shames.
Great Idea: Shames has a transceiver test plot for practise. It is located above the base beside the upper tbar. Other areas often located them by the daylodge.
Shames embraces the backcountry culture and maps an approved uptrack route for users. John Baldwin has also published a map of well used routes around Shames.