The conditions were absolutely perfect. The afternoon sky was a clear, rolling blue, and the temperature hovered around a comfortable -15 C. From where he stood amidst the Ten Stone Range of the Mackenzie Mountains in the Sahtu, Esker Norman had a near panoramic view of the peaks and valleys stretching into the distance—a welcome reward, given the last 40 minutes he had spent climbing this particular ridge wearing telemark skis.
For a few breathless moments, Norman marveled at the untouched majesty of his surroundings, before clicking his heels into his skis and beginning his descent. He took his time, carving slow, languid turns into the powdery snow until he reached the bottom. Suddenly, he had become one of the few people—maybe the only person?—to have skied the Mackenzies. Norman turned around and began to climb once more.
“Skiing is always such an amazing release,” Norman says, thinking back on the experience, half a year later. “You're in a flow state, where you're only involved in that moment and you can be super present to the activity you're doing. Skiing in the Mackenzies is certainly no different. It's a beautiful, expansive mountain range.”
The remote ranges straddle much of the NWT-Yukon border, containing at least 353 named peaks, and stretching up to 2,972 metres tall at their highest point. Norman had come to the mountain that day after years of dreaming, experimenting, and planning. As a long-time resident of Norman Wells and an avid lover of adventure sports, he had always been curious about skiing the Mackenzies.
But actually doing it? That seemed nearly impossible.
While the region has been a magnet to hikers and paddlers, there hasn’t been much in the way of downhill skiing. For starters, they can be hard to get to, with few roads leading there. Norman also cites the lack of a reliable avalanche forecasting in the Sahtu region as a major barrier, since it’s probably the biggest safety consideration when it comes to backcountry skiing. Plus, none of his friends in Norman Wells have downhill ski gear.
“The base of knowledge surrounding the ski potential of the Mackenzie Mountains is almost non-existent,” he says. “So I've been fairly limited and definitely not explored the region to its full extent.”
This changed in late 2021. A year earlier, Norman founded Black Spruce, a non-profit to create outdoor programming for youth, and he was on the hunt for new means of generating funds. This led him to connect with the Sahtu’s charter services company North-Wright Airways over an idea to guide expeditions out of Ten Stone Mountain Lodge–the company’s fly-in wilderness retreat, nestled beside the Backbone Range. They would split the profits.
Soon, the question came up: what about ski tours?
It was certainly an exciting prospect, and one Norman himself was particularly eager to investigate. But if he and the North-Wright team wanted to bring skiing to the Mackenzies, they’d have to prove it was possible first.
So, Norman flew out to the lodge for a night to scope it out. March was an ideal time to go; not only would the warmer spring weather make the snowpack less likely to slide, he reasoned, but it lined up nicely with a break in the charter company’s busy schedule. Seeing as he was the only one with skis, Norman also promised to limit his exploration to a portion of relatively accessible low-angle terrain, lest something go wrong.
When the day finally came, Norman and local photographer Josh Ferguson (enlisted to document the experiment on camera) drove out two-kilometres from the lodge by snowmobile to a small ridge nearby. Norman points out, he could have skied straight from the lodge if he wanted to. From there, he estimates it took about 50 minutes to climb a few hundred metres to the top of the ridge line, then ski back down.
“I just did three laps up there,” he says, adding it was more than enough to know there's more potential up there to keep exploring.
That’s the part that still has Norman buzzing with excitement today. “You're basically in a cirque of mountains, so you're surrounded in every direction by peaks and you could go out in any direction,” he says. It’s a backcountry skier’s dream. With the lodge as a base, visitors could spend a day out exploring nearby slopes, or even pack a snowmobile with camping equipment and drop down into valleys to check out other spots. “That would be an awesome way to do it.”
With the success of their March trip in the rearview, Norman and his partners at North-Wright are now developing packages they can offer visitors. There’s also a small group in Norman Wells who have started to take avalanche safety and awareness training. Norman is one of them.
At this rate, skiing in the Sahtu could become a reality within the year. Norman already has plans to return to the lodge with his skis this coming spring—and he’s inviting anyone else who wants to come along.
“If there are folks who are interested in getting the chance to do lodge-based trips in the Mackenzie Mountains, then they should reach out,” he says. “The more we know that there's interest out there, the more that we can work to make it a reality.”
