Powderhounds Review

San Juan Ski Company Cat Skiing Review The Powderhounds put on their fat skis and reviewed the San Juan Ski Company to give you the skinny on cat skiing in Colorado. The review covers different aspects of their operation and you can determine if the San Juan Ski Co is likely to align with your priorities. That being said, the cat skiing is fantastic so you’ll have an awesome time regardless of your priorities!

Pros

  • The size of the San Juan Ski Co terrain is humungous. It’s the largest cat ski terrain in Colorado, the 2nd largest in the USA, and the 4th biggest in North America. This has many advantages, with the main one being that fresh tracks are almost guaranteed. Another plus is that with many different aspects and plenty of tree skiing, the guides will always be able to find good snow, even if it hasn’t snowed in a couple of weeks.
  • USA cat skiing operations that are located adjacent to a ski resort are commonly small operations with very limited terrain (e.g. Keystone KAT Skiing, Monarch Mountain). San Juan Ski Co obviously doesn’t fit into that category, but they do have the great convenience of being based at a ski resort. During your vacation, it’s easy to combine resort skiing with cat skiing, and it’s much easier to get a leave pass from your husband (or wife!) to go cat skiing if you know he and the kids are having fun at the resort! Better yet, it’s easy to arrange child care!
  • Another major convenience is the provision of quality powder skis and boards by Backcountry Experience (the shop where the SJSC desk is located). Fat skis turn everyone into a powder skiing legend, and it’s handy that you don’t have to go elsewhere to hire them. What's more they're only $25 per day.
  • Cat skiing with SJSC provides great value for money. 
  • The naturally gladed tree skiing is very good with adequate spacing to let those babies rip!
  • This is a great cat skiing operation for strong intermediates.
Cons
  • You probably won’t need a snorkel.
  • We certainly haven’t skied all their terrain, but the treed terrain we experienced needed more pitch, and we experienced many runs that had a long flat slope out to the cat track.
  • The whole day isn’t necessarily spent skiing. With a chair lift ride, a ski down a groomer, a potential van ride, and a snowcat ride before you even start skiing, potential ski time is cut into. Add in the reverse to get home including a descent down a groomed run (which is bizarre if skiing on big planks). Nevertheless the amount of vertical covered is more than enough for most, it’s definitely worth the travel time to get to the good snow, and the groomer at the end of the day makes you appreciate the joys of powder skiing.
  • Safety as a priority is not conveyed to guests, but this isn’t to say they don’t operate under safe conditions.
See how San Juan Ski Co cat skiing ratings compare to other cat ski operations in Colorado, Canada and Chile.

Powder Snow The area receives a very respectable 7.1 metres of snowfall per season, but in comparison to some other cat ski areas in North America, the annual snowfall is rather meagre. On the plus side, the quality of the snow is very good and with elevations up to 3,810 metres, the quality is well retained. And with such huge terrain there are plenty of options to find good snow. When we visited it hadn’t snowed for about 12 days. Whilst it was a little crusty up top, there was good knee deep powder in the trees on the steep pitches.

Tree Skiing Most of their terrain is tree skiing so there’s plenty of variety. The tree skiing we experienced was pretty good with adequate spacing to get into a rhythm. The mellow run-outs were a downside to the terrain, and some steeper pitches would have enhanced the experience.

Strong Intermediate Terrain  One of their strengths is the ability to cater to the strong intermediate powder skier or boarder, which often equates to your average advanced resort rider. Considering the typical clientele at Durango Mountain Resort, this is probably a great niche for SJSC. Warm up runs are on mellow terrain where you can practise figure elevens, and they then tackle slightly steeper slopes that have very widely spaced trees.

Advanced Terrain Our review on this factor may have questionable validity as we were out with a group that had a couple of intermediate powder riders. It’s possible that we didn’t attempt challenging slopes because of the group mix. The slopes we tackled were only steep for very short pitches before mellowing out, but these were incredibly enjoyable and the majority of advanced skiers will be absolutely stoked with a day out cat skiing with San Juan.

Expert and Extreme Terrain (No rating) The operation has some steep alpine terrain that includes bowls and chutes. Normally they don’t ski extreme terrain during the regular season due to avalanche risk, but in spring when the conditions allow, you can book out the whole cat with your expert buddies and huck to your heart’s content.

Overall Terrain SJSC has plenty of terrain, lots of different aspects and good variety. Occasionally they have snowmobilers on their land, but there is so much terrain that it’s not a problem.

Guiding The guides are incredibly friendly and plenty of fun. Their relaxed approach to guiding will suit most laidback folks, but it’s not ideal for inexperienced cat skiers and first timers may want to ask plenty of questions. No instructions were provided regarding how not to get lost, such as establishing a tree buddy and never crossing the cat track. On some runs there was no re-grouping for the entire run and we had to holler a few times to get a couple of guests back on track. It wasn’t surprising that a couple of guests got briefly lost. On the plus side, the guest to guide ratio is very good with a maximum of 6 guests to a guide.

Snowcat The Bombardier snowcats are circa 2000 models with reasonable power. The cabins are set up moderately well with good insulation and bench seats that add to the social aspects of cat skiing. One row of seats faces backwards which makes for an uncomfortable ride, whilst the front facing seats are very relaxing. The side entrance isn’t the most stress-free way to get in on the tracks, although there’s one small step that makes it a little easier. In case of mechanical failure, they have a backup option.

Avalanche Mitigation StrategiesOne could only assume that San Juan Ski Co. utilises various avalanche mitigation strategies or safety plans, because these were largely not evident to guests during the day. Similarly their website does not mention general safety or avalanche precautions, which seems to indicate that it’s not a high priority. This is reasonably common amongst Colorado cat skiing and other USA operations where there is not the same degree of regulation of the industry as found with Canada cat skiing. There seemed to be no structure to their safety protocols such as a guides meeting or use of local avalanche forecasting. The guides do not have minimum standards for certification, and some of the guides do not have any qualifications, only ski patrol experience. On the plus side, a small degree of on-site slope evaluation was conducted and SJSC provide a pack to all guests with a shovel, probe and whistle.

Safety Briefing Once again in an unregulated industry, and like other Colorado cat skiing companies, there is inadequate emphasis on safety. The safety briefing was quick and it only provided a rough outline of backcountry hazards. Instruction on what to do in the event of an avalanche wasn’t really covered, and the general advice was to rely on one of the guides. A demonstration of how to turn the avalanche beacon to search and transmit modes was provided, but nothing about search methods or practice with the beacon. Similarly the briefing did not include practice on how to assemble the probe or shovel, or what to actually do with the equipment provided.

Frills A simple morning coffee was available on arrival to kick start the heart. A souvenir water bottle was provided to store in the cat, and fluids were available throughout the day; essential for the city folk who normally reside at sea level. At the end of the day there was no specific après session, but there are various bars within skipping distance so guests can organise their own après ski party.

Value for Money It will be relatively easy to have enough money in the piggy bank to pay for cat skiing, and considering that the rates include ski hire, it’s a bargain!

Notes Regarding Review The review is largely based on our experience, but also on discussions with staff, former guests, and information available on their website. Our review has some limitations as it’s not possible to ski every run and in all possible snow and weather conditions, and every guide is somewhat different. We acknowledge that everyone’s experience will be slightly different and the ratings are from our perspective only.

The terrain skied on a particular day is also dependent on the ability of the group, and it is worth noting that the group we rode with included a few intermediate skiers. Therefore it’s possible that there is some bias in our ability to rate the variety of the terrain.

For information on the factors considered in the review, and to compare the San Juan Ski Co ratings to other cat operators, see our heli and cat ski ratings document.

The video is not filmed using professional riders, but rather aims to show an example of a real experience.


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