Give me some Canadian powder!

ALLAN RAMSAY tackles Kicking Horse and discovers some wild backcountry skiing and frenzied apres-ski.

Outside the thermometer is reading -15 deg C and sliding rapidly downwards. Not as rapidly, however, as clothing dropping off the woman stripping to some loud and low-down blues tunes inside.

Nakedness and sub-zero temperatures are not usually a good idea when taken in tandem, but this is the Roadhouse Tavern in January in the town of Golden (pop. 4100), deep in British Columbia, Canada, and nobody here sees the two events as anything out of the ordinary.

Spare a thought though for the young(ish) woman on stage who has driven 10 hours on icy roads from Vancouver to take her clothes off, but despite her most vigorous efforts is being upstaged by a scraggy - and totally motionless - sapling of undetermined gender festooned with envelopes.

This is the Monday Money Tree and in the bar, packed with ski bums of both sexes, boarders, loggers, train drivers and brakemen, it's the only game in town. Jammed up against the stage, even a table of sisters is talking branches not bra size.

The Money Tree is the star because with every round of drinks a ticket is handed over which goes in the draw for an hourly raffle.

The winner chooses one of the envelopes, which contain prize vouchers for ski and boarding gear.

But this night is different. One voucher has gone unchosen for the past two months and by all estimates it has now jackpotted to $NZ1000.

By 10.30 pm the Roadhouse, with its floor-to-ceiling mural of Elvis, Hank Williams and bluesman Robert Johnson, is a frenzy of financial anticipation. Almost as frenzied as the dancer, whose audience ratings are chasing the thermometer.

Draw No 4 and one young local finally gets lucky with the tree. The bar breaks up in a welter of hooting and yelling as the winner puts $100 across the counter and gives the rest to a friend for safekeeping. The stripper gives up.

Such is apres-ski in Golden, 20 minutes' drive from Kicking Horse, the latest ski area to be developed in Canada and the country's first four-season resort in 25 years.

It is on the magnificent Trans-Canada Highway, two 1/2 hours' drive from Calgary International Airport through scenery that should be designated an official driving hazard. Think Fiordland stretched, pulled and given years of weight-training.

Kicking Horse, with its 1259m vertical drop, 1618ha of terrain covered in light, dry "champagne-powder" snow, and its proper mountain moniker (it won't be long before macho boarders talk of "riding the Horse"), is about to take the whistle out of British Columbia's famed Whistler Blackcomb - until now Canada's premier ski resort.

It's the snow that does it. Whistler gets heavier and wetter flakes and is known for its rainy days.

Kicking Horse and its neighbouring ski areas, which are west of the Rockies main divide, get metres - neck-deep on most people - of snow that has had all the moisture squeezed out of it. Such lightness and depth of snowpack is usually found only with the aid of a helicopter and an extremely flexible credit card.

Indeed, a day on the mountain, with two, huge, new powder bowls already opened up - access to three more is being planned - has been described as "a helicopter skiing experience for the price of a lift ticket."

A Dutch-Canadian consortium got to hear of this little secret and during the next four years is spending $NZ378 million to develop what was formerly a tiny one-chairlift mountain.

Kicking Horse and Golden have competition for the skiing dollar in a string of small ski areas along the Trans-Canada highway, such as the neighbouring Lake Louise resort. But as a night in the Roadhouse Tavern reveals, what you get here - for the moment at least - is a real live British Columbian mountain settlement and not some cute purpose-built "village" full of Austrian-style chalets and Swiss-themed bars.

It's a working town, sustained by logging and its position as a railroad and truckstop. Plaid shirts and facial hair for men are apparently set down in one of the town's bylaws (although both appear optional for women) and the four-wheel-drives purring down the snow-covered streets are used for the purpose for they were designed.

Similarly, on the mountain, many locals ski and ride with backpacks carrying the full monty of backcountry gear - avalanche transceiver and probes, snow shoes and shovel. Not because the slopes aren't carefully controlled, but for them a day's skiing is using the lifts to gain altitude and then snowshoeing off along connecting ridges for some serious and wild vertical before tramping back to the piste in the late afternoon.

They're laid-back and friendly, too. My night in the Roadhouse, one of two taverns in the town, ended with an invitation to drive one of the miles-long, three-engined freight trains. A tempting proposal, but one I suspect that would not have seen me back in town for another two days, given the distances between destinations in this Rocky Mountain province.

For winter sports freaks of a certain vintage, Kicking Horse and Golden could best be compared with Queenstown before it went neon, pulled on a pair of pink Lycra shorts and reflecting sunglasses to call itself the "adrenalin capital of the world," when it had gravel streets, four pubs, and apres-ski was a freshly washed Swanndri.

Neither Golden nor the slopes will remain as they are for long. By 2005, 900 hotel beds and 3000 chalets will be built at the bottom of the slopes, but the locals have accepted the trade-off between small-town life and a better economic future. Ninety-four per cent said go ahead when polled by developers.

Such is the inevitable result of tourism's "best-kept secrets" being discovered, developed and written about.

Kiwi skiers and boarders looking for good en-piste slopes with easy access to truly wild backcountry and apres-ski to match, should consider tackling the Horse while it's on the cusp.

Casenotes

ACCOMMODATION: Prestige Inn, Golden. Various packages are available from between NZ$133-$314. Contact Prestige Inn

BUS: A shuttle bus runs on a 20-minute journey from Golden to the bottom of the Kicking Horse lifts for a return fare of around $9. Alternatively it is a 20-minute drive.

GEAR: Skis, boots and pole may be hired for around $157 a week from Kicking Horse resort

PASSES: Adult lift passes start at $63 a day. A five-day pass is $308.

CONTACT: For area information try Hellobc