How did Big Red Cats grow from the smallest cat operation in the world to one of the biggest - in just 14 years? Even I wonder how this happened. Locals still can't believe that they have the world's biggest cat operation on their doorstep. Here is how it started.
Paula and I met at dance class in Australia before the Olympics (ask for the details of this story!). We lived on a beach in Australia. We thought that it would be great to live in the mountains in BC. We had always heard great things about Rossland BC. We went and checked it out and we fell in love with the place and decided that it would be great to move there.
The ski hill was for sale, so we thought that we would do up a business plan and information memorandum, and find some investors and buy the ski hill. It turned out that Howard Katkov and a group of investors ended up buying the resort (well done guys). As part of the business plan we thought that the resort needed a great cat skiing operation next to it (in the same way that Fernie had Island Lake cat skiing). So when Howard bought Red, we thought that the most interesting part of the business plan, was the powdercat operation. So we put in our 1st application for the land adjacent to the ski hill. There were a lot of local people who did not want the operation on those lands because there were a lot of people ski touring in that area. So we decided to withdraw the application and apply for the area that we are in now.
Little did we know that the area would be one of the most ideal areas for cat skiing in the world. The shape of the mountains turned out to be perfect for cat skiing. With one mellow way up each mountain - but lots of steeps, typically on the east and north aspects. Neither Paula nor Kieren had actually been cat skiing before - but Kieren had a good idea about terrain and skiing having been a national ski team alpine racer. At first we thought that Big Red Cats would be a 1-2 cat operation. We quickly realised that you could not open up enough terrain for guests just running 1-2 cats. To be a great operation you need to run 3-4 cats each day in order to keep enough terrain open - so that you can always be showing new areas to guests.
People thought that we were crazy. Of course we were!. I was a finance guy specialising in leveraged buyouts and treasury work, and Paula was a former captain in Canadian military who had transitioned to management consulting by way of an an MBA at the Ivey business school. What did we know about cat skiing? The answer was nothing - at first. Over the next 14 years we learned a lot of lessons. The biggest and most important of these lessons was the importance of teamwork. Cat skiing is really a team sport. When all of the guests, guides, and drivers all work together, something magic happens out there!
For the last 14 seasons we continued to explore the area. There have been very few days when I (Kieren) have not skied 1-2 new runs for the first time. It takes our guides about 2 years now to ski just the main runs. I have been skiing in the area every year for 14 years - and there are still a few runs that I have not skied. We will continue to explore the Big Red Cats area.
The future: I dream of an operation where guests can have their best imagined and safest day of powder skiing every day. I recognise that this means different things to different guests. Some guests want open gentle runs, others want steep pillows and cliffs. To achieve this we are committed to improving the area and running our different levels - Uber Expert, Expert, Advanced, and Intermediate.
So here is a brief look at whats happened over the last 14 years.
Kieren - April 2017