Panorama Mountain Resort

Panorama Mountain Resort began in 1962 with about as modest a setup as a ski area can have: a warming hut, a parking lot, and a single rope tow run off a V8 engine, put together by Fritz Zehnder from nearby Invermere and Guy Messerli, who had come from Switzerland. That small operation in the Purcell Mountains has grown, through a stretch of ownership by Intrawest starting in 1993 and, since 2010, by a group of local investors trading as Panorama Mountain Village Inc, into a resort with a 1,217 m vertical drop, among the largest continuous verticals of any ski area in North America.

Ten lifts, including a gondola, a platter lift and six chairlifts, now serve 123 runs across 73.71 km of trail, running from a 1,152 m base up to 2,368 m at the top. The terrain includes the Extreme Dream Zone, a section of double-black-diamond runs for expert skiers covering part of the resort’s 17.02 km of advanced terrain, and Taynton Bowl, backcountry-style terrain accessed from the lift network rather than requiring a hike — features that give Panorama a rougher, more advanced edge than its relatively family-oriented base village might suggest at first glance, even though 46.31 km of the trail network is rated intermediate.

Panorama has also built a genuine competitive ski racing history: the resort has hosted 11 FIS Alpine Ski World Cup races since 1985, along with the 2015 Para-alpine World Championships and the 2022 World Junior Alpine Championships, a track record that puts it among the more internationally recognised race venues in the Canadian Rockies region despite its relatively small size compared with resorts like Whistler Blackcomb. Off the slopes, the base village includes the Panorama Springs Pools complex, the Greywolf Golf Course, and a Nordic centre with about 20.5 km of cross-country trails, rounding out a resort built as much around a longer stay as a single day of skiing.

Invermere, about 19 km away, is the nearest town, and the resort is reached entirely by road from there — there’s no rail or transit alternative. Cranbrook/Canadian Rockies International Airport, roughly 98 km away, is the closest airport, ahead of Castlegar/West Kootenay Regional Airport at about 163 km, while Calgary International Airport, about 173 km off, handles most connecting and international traffic. Panorama sits on the Ikon Pass, Ikon Base Pass and Mountain Collective, the same network that includes Revelstoke and several other Ikon-affiliated Canadian resorts.

Panorama’s growth from a single V8-powered rope tow in 1962 to a resort hosting World Cup ski racing and Para-alpine World Championships illustrates a pattern common to several of the smaller Canadian and New Zealand resorts in this guide: decades of incremental, locally driven investment eventually producing infrastructure and terrain that rivals much larger, more famous destinations, even without the name recognition of a Whistler Blackcomb or an Aspen Snowmass. The change in ownership structure since 2010, back to local investors rather than a large multinational operator, has also kept Panorama’s development pace more measured than resorts under bigger corporate ownership, favouring steady upgrades over rapid large-scale expansion.