Tim Jackson started skiing at his community’s local hill when he was seven years old. This winter will be his 60th season. The small slope at the edge of his hometown of Innisfail, Alberta, is where he met his wife, taught his children and grandchildren to ski, and, despite a hip replacement, still carves down blue-level runs. He spends much of his winter teaching the town’s youngest skiers how to make it down the hill and back up again on the rope tow.

“The rope tow is the biggest obstacle at first. Instead of resting going up the hill, you work with your upper body by holding on to the rope. It gives you a workout both ways.”

Jackson’s family was one of the original handful of families who started the volunteer-run hill in the 1950s. Since his father was busy with work, it was his mother — the avid skier of the family — who acted as the driving force. Once they’d settled on the spot, a north-facing slope overlooking a small lake that freezes in winter, it was a community effort to transform the raw land into a ski hill. A local contractor with a bulldozer cleared the wooded hill into ski runs. Another local donated a propane-powered tractor engine to run the rope tow.

The propane engine has been swapped out for an electric one. Instead of the original straw lodge, skiers can now warm up in front of a gas fireplace in a new chalet. And although the tow runs on the original pulleys, the technology of rope has changed over the years, from hemp to polypropylene to, new for this winter’s ski season, an eight-strand braided nylon rope.

The old-school mechanism of a rope tow can certainly be frustrating for beginners. While the three- and four-year-olds struggle to clutch on to the rope, slightly older kids have the opposite problem: they hold the rope too tightly, and when it gets steep near the summit, they don’t have any strength left.

“That’s one of the tricks I teach them. Hold the rope as gently as you can near the bottom, and squeeze it harder as you get to the top.”

Another rope tow trick? Leather gloves or work gloves, for grip. And two or three pairs of them, so they can be swapped out when they get wet.

Down on two planks
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You certainly don’t need work gloves to make it through the day at a modern ski resort. Compared to these, Innisfail feels like a relic of the past.

With their towering mountains and hundreds of runs, resorts like Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia are truly epic, but they’re not accessible to many people. A single lift ticket can cost as much as a family’s weekly grocery bill, and the slick resort experience of crowded gondolas and overpriced appetizers can override the simple joy of flying down a mountain on two skinny planks.

Innisfail’s $10 lift tickets and DIY ethos provide a meaningful alternative.

And they are often rewarded: deer walk across the lake, and moose have been found resting in the trees beside the runs.

Parents drop their older kids off at one in the afternoon and don’t pick them up until the sun is setting, knowing there will be volunteers looking out for them and a communal phone if they get into any trouble.

Jackson laughs and calls the hill a “babysitting service,” but his voice is buoyant. It’s easy to tell he’s proud of the strength of the community and what they’ve created.

Perhaps the most central tenet of skiing at Innisfail, whether it’s your first season or your 60th: pure, childlike joy reigns supreme. Jackson remembers the playful days fondly.

“What we’d do is ski as fast as we could down the hill, scoot out on the ice on the lake, and see how far we’d get. That was the game.”

On an icy day, if you stayed in a tuck position from the top of the hill, you could make it all the way across the lake.