Castle Mountain Ski Resort is a ski area located in the province of Alberta in Canada. The resort is in the town of Pincher Creek, AB. We recently ranked all of Alberta's ski resorts, so you can see where Castle Mountain stacks up against all its nearby ski hills!
Castle Mountain is a part of the INDY Ski Pass system. This allows you to buy one lift pass, and ski at all of the slopes that are also a part of the group.
Castle Mountain is a part of the Powder Alliance pass network. This pass allows you to buy a season ticket at your home slope, then be able to use it to ski up to three free days at the rest of the participating resorts.
Castle Mountain Lodging:
Castle Mountain Ski Resort Terrain Overview
Castle Mountain has a total of 94 ski trails, which are serviced by 6 ski lifts, gondolas and/or trams. The amount of skiable area in this park is huge, with a maximum of 3,592 acres available to skiers. This area is equivalent to 1,454 hectares, 6 square miles, or 15 square kilometers.
Castle Mountain's slopes see on average 354 inches (139 cm) of snowfall a year. That is almost 29 feet a year!
Total Runs
94
Lifts
6
Skiable Acres
3,592(15 km2)
Annual Snowfall
354"(139 cm)
Castle Mountain Ski Resort Elevation
Castle Mountain Ski Resort has a summit elevation of 7,463 feet, or 2,275 meters. However, not all of that elevation is able to be skied. The base of the ski slope sits at 4,630 feet above sea level, creating a ski hill that is 2,833 feet (863 meters) high. This is referred to as the slope's vertical drop - or a measure of how high the skiable hill is.
Castle Mountain's summit elevation is higher than average. There are a lot of ski slopes that are much higher than this one (some stretch to 12,000 feet!), but it is not small by any stretch of the imagination.
Summit Elevation
7,463'(2,275 m)
Vertical Drop
2,833'(863 m)
Base Elevation
4,630'(1,411 m)
Castle Mountain Ski Resort Difficulty Level
Difficulty Score™
78.9out of 100
DID YOU KNOW?
At Parks & Trips, we've created a proprietary Difficulty Score that attempts to show how difficult a particular ski slope is. We get to this number by combining a number of metrics for each resort and comparing them to its peers. Most of the score is based off the amount of easy-intermediate-expert slopes by acreage and the maximum vertical drop of the overall resort, but also includes a few lesser-used metrics as well.
Our algorithm compares each resort’s metrics with all others in North America, then assigns each a Difficulty Score, which we use to rank them accordingly. Resorts with a lower score are easier to ski than those with a higher one. However, a high score does not mean that the resort does not have any easy slopes, or vice versa. This is just an overall score given to the resort based on all its metrics grouped together.
Skiiable Area by Difficulty Level
Castle Mountain has 3,592 total skiable acres, which can be broken down into the three main groups of difficulty: Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert.
Seeing as Castle Mountain is one of the hardest ski areas in the country, it's no surprise that over 90% of its trails rated as either intermediate or expert-level. This leaves only 10% of its skiable acres for the beginners.
Beginner
10%(359 acres)
Beginner trails (identified by a green circle) are the easiest trails on the hill with a gradual 25% or less gradient, and are usually wide to accommodate beginner skiers.
Intermediate
21%(754 acres)
Intermediate trails (identified by a blue square) are usually the most popular and crowded runs, which have a slope of anywhere between 25-40%.
Expert
69%(2,478 acres)
Expert trails (identified by a black diamond... or two) are the hardest slopes on the mountain, and have very steep gradients over 40%.
Is Castle Mountain Ski Resort good for beginners?
This is one of the hardest ski areas in the country to ski at, so it is not great for beginners. Castle Mountain Ski Resort ranks in the top 10% of the most-difficult ski resorts in the country. It has 69% of its trails rated as expert, or black-diamond level.
Castle Mountain Ski Resort Location
Castle Mountain Ski Resort is located in the province of Alberta, Canada. This ski area is nearby the town of Pincher Creek, AB.
Address:
Pincher Creek, AB T0K Canada
View on Google Maps
Website:
skicastle.ca/
GPS Coordinates:
49.42681, -114.77280
Getting to Castle Mountain Ski Resort
By Car: If you are driving, you would set your GPS to either the ski resort's name (Castle Mountain Ski Resort), its coordinates of 49.42681, -114.77280 (latitude, longitude), or simply drive towards the town of Pincher Creek, AB to get close.
By Air: If you are coming in from across the country, then you may need to board an airplane to get here.
A large airport has scheduled major airline service with millions of passengers per year. This type of airport always accepts international flights. Here are the closest large airport(s) to Castle Mountain Ski Resort.
| Name | Code | City | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calgary International Airport | YYC | Calgary, AB | 195 km |
A medium-sized airport has scheduled regional airline service. This type of airport may or may not accept international flights. Here are the closest medium-sized airport(s) to Castle Mountain.
| Name | Code | City | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cranbrook/Canadian Rockies International Airport | YXC | Cranbrook, BC | 76 km |
| Glacier Park International Airport | FCA | Kalispell, MT | 130 km |
| Lethbridge County Airport | YQL | Lethbridge, AB | 144 km |
There may also be much smaller regional airports next to Castle Mountain Ski Resort, but we didn't list them here due to the fact that no major airlines go through them.
Other Nearby Ski Resorts
Skiers will - especially if coming from far away - try and visit a couple different slopes all in the same trip. Here are the closest other ski slopes within 100 miles of Castle Mountain Ski Resort.
| Name | Location | Summit | Difficulty Score™ | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fernie Alpine Resort | Fernie, BC | 7,050 ft | 65% | 23 km |
| Pass Powderkeg | Blairmore, AB | 5,183 ft | 31% | 30 km |
| Whitefish Mountain | Whitefish, MT | 6,817 ft | 65% | 75 km |
| Kimberley | Kimberly, BC | 6,500 ft | 60% | 94 km |
| Fairmont Hot Springs Resort Ski Area | Fairmont Hot Springs, BC | 5,200 ft | 42% | 126 km |
| Turner Mountain | Libby, MT | 5,952 ft | 68% | 128 km |
| Silver Mountain | Kellogg, ID | 6,300 ft | 58% | 152 km |
| Panorama Mountain Village | Panorama, BC | 7,875 ft | 71% | 156 km |
| Fortress Mountain Resort | Kananaskis, AB | 8,400 ft | 55% | 159 km |
Castle Mountain Ski Resort Mountain Stats
| Name | Statistic |
|---|---|
| Summit Elevation | 7,463 ft |
| Base Elevation | 4,630 ft |
| Vertical Drop | 2,833 ft |
| Trails | 94 (10% Beginner, 21% Intermediate, 69% Expert) |
| Lifts | 6 |
| Skiable Acres | 3,592 |
| Avg. Annual Snowfall | 354 inches |