Iain MacMillan ski tours in the French Alps, between Les Arcs and Tignes/Val D’Isère. MacMillan has spent 30 years as an editor and writer at Ski Canada magazine and hit the slopes both on and off the beaten track in countries around the world.Supplied
Iain MacMillan is an editor and writer at Ski Canada magazine
Skiing is a sport that takes many travellers around the world. But most haven’t gone as far as Iain MacMillan. The Hamilton native grew up on the slopes and even eloped during a ski trip to Chile. Ski travel fuelled more than 30 years of stories as an editor and writer at Ski Canada magazine. He won’t admit how many countries he’s skied (“Counting countries or resorts or numbers of days on slope in a particular season is boastful and embarrassing or at best nerdy,” he says) but it might be safe to say he has snow in his veins.
A Swiss splurge for skiers who love five-star service with the five-star fuss
What’s the wildest place you’ve skied? Tell me about that trip.
I wouldn’t use “wild” to describe Iran but along with Georgia, and sailing and ski-touring in Norway’s Arctic, I’d definitely rate our Persian powder trip in 2019 as one of my three favourites.
Canadians need a visa to visit Iran but I had to get a journalist visa, which was really tough. Curiously, I managed to find a skier in the issuing office and he made it happen. Along with my wife and girls we travelled with two other adventurous ski families, 14 of us in total, aged 18 to 60. I found a lovely mountain guide online who I corresponded with regularly to create a fantastic 12-day itinerary.
Our driver took us along the Silk Road to Shah-era-built ski resorts, to trailheads of backcountry ski-touring routes as well as ancient historic sites. We camped in the desert and stayed at a five-star-ish hotel in Tehran. Along the way, we quickly learnt how sincere Persians are in welcoming travellers – from chairlift chat to being invited into people’s homes and schools. We kept meeting the sweetest, most accommodating people who were genuinely interested in us. Politics of the day played no role in our discussions or impressions of one another.
Where was the warmest welcome?
Iain MacMillan stands above the Allalin Glacier between Saas-Fee and Zermatt, Switzerland.Supplied
After Iran, the warmest welcome goes to Georgia. When I took the family in 2020 before the pandemic shut down air travel, immigration agents stamped every foreign passport, then offered a free mini-bottle of wine because Georgia is the birthplace of fermented grape. The food in Georgia was the best of any trip we’ve taken, too.
On Georgia’s side of the Caucasus Mountains are 32 peaks above 4,000 metres and three above 5,000. The country has seven ski resorts, almost all of them built in the last 10 or 15 years. We stayed in luxurious hotels and ate in the excellent restaurants of Gudauri, 44 kilometres south of the Russian border, and about a two-hour drive from the capital, Tbilisi. Ski-touring near Gudauri led us up to the ancient mountaintop monastery of Lomisi where young monks in flowing black vestments (and ski boots beneath) shared religious rituals and tea as well as warned us not to ski down into disputed South Ossetia, a region lost in the 2008 Georgian-Russia war.
You can’t return home from ski trips like these without feeling like you’ve taken a university course in multiple subjects.
You must have had some scary moments during your travels?
No risk, no reward, right? On-slope or backcountry heli-evacuation insurance is very cheap in Europe and the service is far preferred over delivering you to a first aid station via long, bumpy toboggan ride. Probably the scariest off-piste moment was when a friend dropped into a crevasse crossing a glacier at Pontresina, near St. Moritz, Switzerland, two years ago. Thankfully our group of eight had hired a mountain guide who had everyone roped together. Our friend in the crevasse was the heaviest in the conga line of skiers and was dangling about eight metres down for an hour. But the rescue went as practised.
Have you skied out Canada? Or do you work as an ad-hoc ski ambassador for Canada (and its skiing) overseas?
There are still lots and lots of places I haven’t visited yet, some in Canada, too. When we’re abroad, one of my ski-mates often introduces me as “Canadian cultural attaché” because I’m always prattling on about where the best skiing is in Canada. It’s an honorary position. And unpaid.
Where was your best ski day ever?
Sicily. I know, strange, eh? Even my Italian friends don’t know you can ski Mount Etna but for beginners and intermediates there are two small ski stations on its flanks. And if you don’t mind going for a walk with your skins for a few hours, you can ski tour up Europe’s highest volcano and peer through the steam into three rumbling craters.
In March, 2023, we skinned up the volcano, it was a bit Alice in Wonderland-ish watching the snow thin out instead of deepen the higher we climbed. When the steam was beneath our feet it was time to strap our skis on our backpacks and hoof it up the last 20 minutes
We were mesmerized at the summit, and we wore helmets given the volcano had erupted five days earlier. After exploring around the rims of two craters for more than an hour in temperatures below -10, we finally hiked back down to the snowline and clicked into our bindings. About 20 turns later, the snow was over our knees and we skied untracked Selkirk-like powder. Surreal.
So, where are you off to ski this winter?
Over Christmas I’m celebrating the 50th anniversary of cat-skiing with family and friends where the concept began – at Selkirk Snowcat Skiing in the B.C. Interior. In the new year we’ll spend five weeks in Switzerland, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Japan and Ulleung, a little-known powdery island reached by night ferry off the east coast of South Korea.
Turkey has skiing?
Erciyes is huge dormant volcano in central Turkey (near the fairy chimneys and cave homes of Cappadocia) with a modern infrastructure of lifts, posh hotels – and a slopeside mosque. There’s also heli-skiing and ski-touring in the supersnowy Kackar Mountains, just south of the Black Sea. But on this trip, we’re heading to a smaller resort with some promising backcountry near the border with Armenia and Mount Ararat in the distance. Ski destinations like Turkey are pretty special, they come with thousands of years of history lessons, cuisine and culture just beyond the ski slopes – and you can fly direct from Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
