Latest: SNOW SCENE: Best is yet to come at Panorama this winter

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It isn’t exactly hard to make a pitch for skiers and riders to visit Panorama Mountain Resort at this time of year.

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The days are getting longer. Temperatures are climbing a little bit. The snow’s been accumulating all winter.

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Who wouldn’t want to make the drive to the Invermere, B.C., resort for a couple days racing down the side of the mountain?

Maybe there are a few people out there still complaining about the slow start to the winter in terms of snow, but for most of us, any day in the mountains is a good day.

And that’s always true at Panorama.

“What it’s really about is being out there and sliding around and getting the aspirational experience of being out in the mountains and connecting with the mountains and just being on a snow surface,” said Panorama’s president and CEO, Steve Paccagnan. “What better way to spend your day, your weekend with your friends, your family or your better half.

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“We’re ready to receive and welcome and see smiling faces. We’ll do our part and we’ll make sure the snow surface is the best it can be, so let’s have an amazing March and an amazing spring.”

While it’s true that resorts across North America have seen less snow than they sometimes do this winter, it’s worth remembering that there is still a lot of great skiing and riding.

And Panorama is especially equipped to make sure its runs are in solid shape for guests.

The resort has 375 snow guns on the mountain, so it can make a whole lot of snow. It also has the largest fleet of Prinoth snow groomers in Canada.

So while there’s nothing anyone can do about guaranteeing knee deep powder, the slopes are still covered in snow and every skier and rider is going to be able to spend their day ripping down long, well-maintained runs all over the resort.

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“We’re in great shape,” Paccagnan said. “We’re running a good dozen cats out there, inclusive of our two passenger cats.

“We put a lot of effort into our summer grooming, so that’s paying really solid dividends as we come into the winter months, coupled with snowmaking and really renowned grooming, which has set us up for success.”

And it’s worth noting that March is, typically, the snowiest month of the year in the mountains in Alberta and Eastern B.C. It’s why Canada is such a destination for spring skiing for guests from around the world.

With that in mind, Panorama has also packed their calendar with big, fun events between now and the middle of April.

There’s a lot to get through, so we’ll just quickly touch on a couple highlights here.

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First, there’s Panorama’s first annual Pride and Ski Festival from March 22-24, which is a celebration of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and will include everything from après fun to snowshoe tours to a drag ball to an amazing race.

Then, there’s the 2024 NORAM Cup Finals, which go from April 1-11 and feature intense, fast and technical competition. There are downhill, super-G and giant slalom races, as the future stars of the FIS circuit go for broke at Panorama.

And, on a slightly different note, the Red Bull Slopesoakers event goes April 13 and it’s a lot more than just your traditional pond skip. The event combines a slopestyle rail jam and a pond skim, with participants either going big or getting soaked.

So yeah, it’s a busy, special time of year at Panorama.

“The best is yet to come as we get into the later part of February and March,” Paccagnan said. “That Vitamin D, that sunshine, it changes your whole outlook and there’s a lot of sunshine up in the high alpine.”

daustin@postmedia.com

www.twitter.com/DannyAustin_9

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