Marmot Basin: Welcoming Resort in Canadian Rockies

Sitting majestically in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, Marmot Basin is a welcoming resort overlooking the city of Jasper. Local Todd Noble will take us on a mountain tour, from a cruise down Highway 16 to dropping in from Eagle Ridge and relaxing with a beer on the mountain at Charlie's Pub. Marmot Basin is a key stop on a Collective Trek to the Canadian Rockies.

What is Inside the Mountain Collective?

The lure of the mountains. Dropping your skis into a powder chute. Soaking in a panoramic alpine view. Relaxing by the fire at the end of a day. Inside the Mountain Collective takes you inside the world's most alluring mountains, helping you plot a Collective Trek vacation to multiple resorts.

Ep 9 - Marmot Basin
Tom Kelly: [00:00:07] Experience the feeling of powder floating up to your goggles. Take in a sweeping panoramic view from atop a mountain ridgeline. Feel the thrill of laying an edge on perfect corduroy and arching a sweeping turn. Relax in front of a crackling fireplace at the end of a great day on the mountain. Welcome to Inside the Mountain Collective, the podcast series that takes you on a journey to the dream destinations included on the Mountain Collective Pass. Each episode will take you on a Collective Trek, visiting two or more resorts, giving you local insights into how to maximize your Mountain Collective pass and to explore some of the sport's most exhilarating destinations. Check it out today at Mountain Collective. Now join us on a Collective Trek with our local guides on Inside the Mountain Collective.

Tom Kelly: [00:01:05] When you think about the value in the Mountain Collective pass, you're immediately drawn to the Canadian Rockies. This is some of the most majestic alpine terrain in the world. Perfect for a collective trek. Hi, I'm Tom Kelly and welcome to Inside the Mountain Collective. Skiers and riders are well familiar with the names of Banff, Lake, Louise, Panorama, Revelstoke and Sun Peaks. But today we're going to introduce you to a secret spot that is a must include resort for your Canadian Rockies collective trek. Marmot Basin sits right outside of Jasper, Alberta, just a day's drive from Lake Louise or Revelstoke, and a spectacular drive, I might add. Our mountain tour will be led by local skier Todd Noble. He's a lifelong skier who figured out how to get that great summer job and then leave enough time for skiing in the winter. By summer, he runs the famous Jasper Skytram. But in the winter, you'll find Todd out on the slopes of Marmot Basin nearly every day. So grab your trail map and follow along. As Todd Noble and I take a mountain tour of Marmot Basin. And today on Inside the Mountain Collective, we are heading up to Marmot Basin up in Jasper, Alberta. And with us today, Todd Noble. Todd, thank you for joining us on Inside the Mountain Collective.

Todd Noble: [00:02:20] Hey, Tom, It's my pleasure to be here.

Tom Kelly: [00:02:22] This is on my bucket list now, as I've learned a little bit more about Marmot Basin up in Jasper, I think a lot of us are familiar with the areas around Calgary and some of the areas over in B.C., But what's the vibe like up there in Jasper?

Todd Noble: [00:02:35] Well, Jasper is your typical mountain community. You know, there's the local shop owners out on the street greeting guests. I mean, these are the shop owners and obviously it's a busy little four season resort. But primarily we see the majority of our traffic here in Jasper during the summer season. And then the winter season is all about skiing. I mean, there's a number of activities in the Jasper area. Of course, we've got the skating on the lakes and we've got the canyon crawls and all the different fat biking on the trails around here. It's endless, really. It's a cool little mountain community with that resort feel in the background as opposed to the resort feel in the foreground. You know, it feels like you're more in a community when you're in Jasper.

Tom Kelly: [00:03:25] Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about your background and how you made your way up there. I know you grew up in Calgary and that was a place you used to ski with the family. But give us a411 on how you made it up to Marmot.

Todd Noble: [00:03:38] I have family throughout Jasper, throughout Alberta, you know, Northern Alberta, central Alberta. We were the southern part of the province, the family. And so we would use Jasper as a gathering spot specifically for family gatherings during the winter and we would all ski Marmot Basin. Of course, we had access to Lake Louise and Sunshine Village and we would do that quite often on weekends and things like that. But Jasper was a special kind of holiday place for us, you know, Sunshine and Lake Louise, being so close to Calgary was kind of our backyard. But then when Jasper, when the family met in Jasper, that was more of a special holiday place. So I've always had fond memories of Jasper growing up as a kid.

Tom Kelly: [00:04:20] Give us a little sense of where Jasper is geographically.

Todd Noble: [00:04:25] Yeah, Jasper is tucked away in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, we’re essentially four hours from any major airport. You know, if you were to fly into Edmonton or if you were to fly into Calgary or if you were to fly into Kamloops in B.C., we're about a four hour drive from each location there. So that makes us unique. And that's again, where you get that more of that unique kind of mountain community feel. We don't have people driving through just for the day. Let's say when you come into Jasper, you're hanging out for the weekend or a few days for sure.

Tom Kelly: [00:04:57] Yeah. I think a lot of us are familiar with some of the other great Mountain Collective resorts up in Canada, places like Banff, Sunshine Lake, Louise Revelstoke, Panorama, Sun Peaks. Those are all reasonable proximity to Jasper.

Todd Noble: [00:05:14] Oh, absolutely. If you think about planning that out, you could have an epic tour through fly into Calgary, drive up through the Bow Valley, hit Lake Louise Sunshine Village, and then take the 93 North up to Jasper, the 93 north. That highway is highly rated as one of the top drives in North America over and over again. That's an attraction in itself. Just getting from Lake Louise to Jasper's amazing. And then you're up in Jasper and then you could continue north into B.C., northwest into B.C., actually a little southwest into B.C. and then you'd hit Kamloops and sun Peaks. Then you curl back around and come back east towards Panorama and then back through to Calgary if you wanted. Or you could fly out Vancouver, whatnot, goes any which way, but that would be an epic, epic tour.

Tom Kelly: [00:06:07] So for those of you listening who have them out in Collective Pass, just do the math on this. You get two days at each of those resorts. There's a half dozen resorts and a nice ten day trip.

Todd Noble: [00:06:18] It's pretty remarkable. Take a week to ten days and it would be busy. You'd be tired for sure.

Tom Kelly: [00:06:24] But that's what we want, isn't it? Yeah, skiers, that's what we want. I've done the drive out from Calgary to Banff and Lake Louise, and it just is majestic as you see the Rockies come into view. But I haven't done the drive north up to Jasper. And tell us a little bit more in detail. What are the views like as you get into the Jasper National Park?

Todd Noble: [00:06:44] Oh, Tom, you talk epic. I mean, you get into Lake Louise, of course, Calgary to Lake Louise is maybe a couple of hours. You're in the Rockies from Calgary within an hour. But then from Lake Louise to Jasper is another two, two and one half hour drive. But it takes people all day. Most people, it should take them all day because you are stopping every ten, 20 kilometers. You're stopping. There's there's. Places you go, you go through the Athabasca Icefield It's hard to explain. You have to. It is. It is one of the most scenic drives in North America. It's an attraction in itself. And like I say, it takes two and one half hours straight shot, but most people will take all day.

Tom Kelly: [00:07:24] Now, you ended up in Jasper with a great job and we should talk a little bit about running the Jasper Skytram.

Todd Noble: [00:07:30] But yeah.

Tom Kelly: [00:07:31] If you think back on the things that caused you to really take root in Jasper, we've covered some of them already, but give us a deeper sense of, of the place and of the mountain that really made you want to call this home.

Todd Noble: [00:07:46] Well, I definitely had some options, you know, growing up in Calgary, of course, with access to the mountains so close. And I was also in interior B.C. I went through school there and I was focused on ski resort management. At the time, I thought this was amazing, looking at an opportunity to actually live and work, make a career out of skiing, I thought, this is unbelievable. So I signed up for that and I had a lot of options going through school and making the contacts, and I was really focused on the interior B.C. at the time. But, you know, realizing there weren't a lot of four CS in destinations at that point. And I was thinking maybe Sun Peaks would be the place. And then getting out of school there was the opportunity. It was a summer gig here at the Sky Tramp and I jumped on that thinking, Okay, well great, because Marmot Basin is right there. I can work there in the summer and head over to Marmot Basin in the wintertime. This was my plan. But, you know, I kind of made a go of it, you know, working at Marmot Base and here and there and even just taking some of those ski host gigs just to get a free lift ticket and, and then maintaining my winters off a little bit. But you know, that was, that was 26, 27 years ago. The tram has turned into a full time gig for me, which I'm now I didn't ... I never expected to be working for a summer attraction year round, but that seems to be the best scenario where my winter now frees up a little bit more.

Todd Noble: [00:09:17] I don't have the stresses of day to day work. Our winter work at the tram is just more about preparing for the next summer. So I don't have the staff and the guests and everything to worry about is just a core group of us in the winter that prepare for summer. So that allows me now to take full advantage of Marmot Basin. Marmot Basin is just one of those hills where after skiing, all those other hills, you know, panorama sand peaks, Lake Louise, Sunshine after skiing, all those hills, I mean they are amazing. Absolutely. But it's that, it's almost like Marmot Basin is almost like a private club, you know it's, it's just so it's wide open. We don't have a backside there. It's just a big front side face. I mean, there's different aspects of the hill that give you a backside feeling, but you can stay on. You just ski the whole front side. You end up everything kind of funnels into itself as well. So you can branch out. You can have family members that might not want to ski the technical terrain. So you can branch out, you can ski the train you want and you all end up at the same lift. It's amazing that way.

Tom Kelly: [00:10:21] You know, before we have you take us on a mountain tour, listeners, if you want to understand the professional ski bum route. Todd Scott the plan here, you know, you find a great resort, you figure out the free ticket to get started, and then ultimately you get a great job that has most of your winters free. How many days do you get up at Marmot each winter, do you think?

Todd Noble: [00:10:41] Oh, I mean, it's gotten to the point where I've got my own family here now and all my kids went through the race program, the Nancy Green program. And so obviously we were up there every weekend for sure. If I can squeak in the odd powder day, if it's a Tuesday or a middle of the week or whatnot, I'll take full advantage of that. So, you know, it's one of those kind of weekend warrior approaches with the kids and everything like that. But now as they get a little bit older and they're out on their own, we're out there easily three times a week.

Tom Kelly: [00:11:16] Nice. That's a great way to experience it. So, listeners, we're going to have a mountain tour from Todd Noble here in just a minute, but you might want to pull up a trail map on your screen. You can find that at Ski marmot, that's ski marmot e-comm and pull up a trail map. And just to kick it off, Todd, give us a little overview of the mountain and then we're going to dive into some more detail.

Todd Noble: [00:11:37] Yeah, I definitely, like I said, Marmot Basin is one of those places where we can easily talk about the fact that you're not going to be waiting in line for more than five minutes. Five minutes is a long time in a lift line at Marmot Basin. So it's one of those places where you can ski your legs out really quick and it's wide open in the way that you've got terrain that is accommodating for the whole family from the top of. Any left, including the knob chair, which brings you up to the top of the mountain. There's a route down for, again, any ability. And then there's the, you know, the shoulders of the mountain, be it Eagles East or Tracy Braes, which is offering a little bit more technical terrain. And you can ski those off the shoulders, but then you everything curls into itself again like I mentioned to to meet at any particular chair that the rest of the family travelled with you. But then you all break out and do your own thing and meet at the same chair. It's kind of wild that way. You know, I think it's about 40% of the advanced or expert train and then the rest make up the intermediate and the beginner train and it just spreads across the whole face of the mountain. So like I said, you can get that in certain aspects. You get that backside feel on the front side wherever you go.

Tom Kelly: [00:13:00] And is the mountain generally north facing?

Todd Noble: [00:13:03] The mountain is, I would say, kind of a northeast or easterly north easterly facing the shoulder there on Tres Hombres is facing north for sure. And then if you're going up the Eagle Ridge chair, you've got some north face. And so it's the whole mountain. There's different aspects. You've got north facing, northeast facing and then strictly facing.

Tom Kelly: [00:13:22] So give us a route around the mountain if you're going to take out some friends who are intermediate skiers, they're just looking at a cruise around the mountain a little bit. What's a typical mountain tour that you would take them on at Marmot Basin?

Todd Noble: [00:13:34] Yeah, I know that's easy. This is something that I do all the time to, you know, approaching the day and just getting up there the first few runs. What I'll do is grab the CRE or the Canadian Rocky Express chair that takes you right from the base area up to just above Mid Mountain. You can still get higher over by the knob chair, but going up to the Canadian Rockies Express, coming down to Highway 16, which is just off the steers right to that Highway 16 is one of those classic fall lines. It's just ... it's I especially at the beginning of the day they'll typically be groomed you'll ski down that you can cruise over to the paradise chair which is just off the skier's left side shoulder of the mountain, head up the Paradise chair, do Highway 16 again. And the reason I go to paradise right after that is just it's just more of a quicker just a quicker route up, as opposed to go all the way down. Like I said, there's really no crowds anywhere. But if you really want to avoid the early morning or the rush there, if you want to avoid that 5 minutes standing in line, which is just ridiculous. Five minutes.

Tom Kelly: [00:14:41] How awful.

Todd Noble: [00:14:42] Oh, you just go over to the Paradise chair. There won't be anybody there right away. So you can cruise down Highway 16 a few times, get your ski legs on, and then depending on what friends I have visiting at the time, we can head over to Eagle Ridge, cruise down through Eagles East. There's a playground in there that doesn't get tracked up right away. Or we head over to the knob chair and into Charlie's pool. If it was one of those mornings where you've got a lot of fresh snow. Jeez, I mean, most people will just head high right away, obviously, and then ski through Charlie's Bowl or over to trays hombres. And these are more technical routes, but the snow that collects in those bowls is just crazy.

Tom Kelly: [00:15:25] Let's explore the knob chair a little bit. Just looking at the trail map and folks, I invite you to follow along. Just go to ski marmot. Com and you can pull up the trail map, but it looks like it's a nice little hike up to the top of Marmot Peak. And I'm sure on a powder day that's a very popular destination.

Todd Noble: [00:15:41] Well, on a powder day or just any one of those bluebird days, it's one of those things where, you know, on a powder day it looks like a train, like an anthill of people walking up there, you know, skis over your shoulder and just kind of kicking some stairs in. And it's maybe about a 25 minute hike up or if you're taking your time, a half hour hike up, and then you've got that whole it's kind of a that's more of a north northeast facing bowl from the peak coming down. And yeah, that's some fun stuff for sure. You know, you never really get that tract out because people I guess the hike kind of deters some people away. But it's really not that hard once you get to the top of that peak and you're looking over to the back side, it is just endless peaks. You can look straight 360 from that point and that's where you're really highlighted as to where you are right in the heart of the Rockies.

Tom Kelly: [00:16:32] Where is the city of Jasper sit? Do you see it from the front side of the mountain?

Todd Noble: [00:16:36] Well, yeah, if you can see kind of if you're going up the Paradise chair or even the three the Canadian Rockies Express as you're working your way up, if you look over your right shoulder, Jasper would be sitting northeast. I mean, if you're a skiing Tres Hombres as well as standing at the top of any one of the peaks, you stand at the top. We're just northeast of that. So it's maybe about a 20 minute drive from town.

Tom Kelly: [00:17:00] Not bad and let's go back to the mountain tour. But now let's say that you've got some of your really hardcore. And buddies and you're looking to go up and really make them work. Really gnarly lines. Really make them work. Where are you going to take them?

Todd Noble: [00:17:16] Well, we'll do some of those small hikes, Tom, for sure. We'll go up the Canadian Rockies Express and then from the top of that ski, straight off of that, there's … just off to the right. There's a small hike under 5 minutes. Not even I wouldn't call it a hike. You just have to work your way up to the top of the runs there. And that puts you right on the top of train zombies. And then you can drop in a number of spots there or even just curling underneath the left. You can access trails on raise that way as well. Then you've got that little, little goat track that comes out of that and then pops out back into more of the mainstream runs and onto the Paradise chair and then would go up the Paradise chair, ski over to the knob chair, make our way up to the peak there, and then we can ski all the way down from the top of that over to the Eagle Ridge quad. And then we would end up going into Eagle's Nest, playing in there a little bit or depending on the snow. Once we got off the top of the Eagle Ridge Quad, we would do another hike. There's maybe a 20 minute hike there where you can access like cornice, cornice run and thunderbolts up in that way. Todd Noble: Those are fun as well. And then that will take you back down. By that time, you know, you're looking for maybe a beer or something and an Eagle Chalet, not Eagle Chalet, but Charlie's -- Charlie's Pub, Right. Mid Mountain. That's a busy one. And your friends are asking you to slow down at that point.

Tom Kelly: [00:18:43] I'm getting tired just looking at the trail map. I do. You know, as I look at the trail map, the areas that really stand out to me. First of all, trees on bridges that you talked about, but particularly Eagles East and just the collection of runs that are in that little part of the mountain, it just looks like a ton of fun.

Todd Noble: [00:19:00] Yeah, there's a lot of the open little open bowls through the top part and then it kind of funnels in towards the there's a lot of fun tree skiing in there. There's a lot of little drops and again you find just surprise pockets of snow, big pockets of snow through there. And it's fun because the tree ski and when you're when you're going up the the Eagle Express you're that everything there is in sight over your left shoulder and off your left side And you can often hear people just hooting and hollering and you can't see them, but you can hear them because of the trees and everything in there. And it's always fun going up and listening to that.

Tom Kelly: [00:19:36] Let's talk about coffee and apres on the Mountain. If you're going to start your ski day at Marmot, where are you going to pick up that cup of morning coffee?

Todd Noble: [00:19:44] Oh, yeah, definitely. So like I said, those first couple of runs would take Highway 16. What I'd like to do is take two or three runs on there, depending on the conditions, of course, and then just come on down straight to the bottom and just go to the main lodge at the bottom and there's a cappuccino bar there with a big wide open, well-lit lots of windows. It's a place where you can just kind of relax the fireplace action there and just grab a coffee and some pastries or whatever, power up again. And sometimes it's hard to get out of that cappuccino bar. You end up.

Tom Kelly: [00:20:17] First of all, so you've got a cappuccino bar at the base lodge at Ski Marmot.

Todd Noble: [00:20:23] Yeah. Yeah, you bet.

Tom Kelly: [00:20:25] That's amazing. That's amazing.

Todd Noble: [00:20:27] Then there's the ...

Tom Kelly: [00:20:29] If you want. If you want to stay up on the mountain, though, what are your options there?

Todd Noble: [00:20:33] Well, just up at Mid Mountain, Charlie's Bar's there, the Eagle Chalet's there, the there's kind of more I wouldn't call it fine dining, but you've got the full serve dining environment there. You've got the cafeteria there, you've got the lounge, Charlie's Bar. And that's popular. That's where you'll find a lot of locals just kind of hovering in there in between runs and that's right at Mid Mountain. So from there, you're either going to Eagle Ridge or you go into the Paradise Quad. That's where you'll find firepits as well. They do a lot of events up there in the spring. There's some live acts and things like that. So that's just a great place to hang out.

Tom Kelly: [00:21:10] And then when the day is done and maybe the day is done at noon or maybe it's 4:00. But what are the hot apres spots right around the mountain?

Todd Noble: [00:21:18] Well, so like I say, it's about a 20 minute drive from town to Marmot Basin. Marmot Basin is actually the highest base elevation in Canada. So you're driving 20 minutes from town’s basically straight up. So you wouldn't really spend too much time unless you've got a designated driver, which is not uncommon. There's the shuttles, of course you want to take the shuttles, but to ski your legs out is pretty quick. We could be breaking away from there by 3:00 some days and head down. And it's not uncommon to find some of the pubs full of people by 4 p.m. down in town. There's a number of pubs down in town, the apres ski scene and Jasper's. It's proper. You've got a number of places in there. We'd like to go to the dead dog and grab some beers and some wings there and or you go over to the whistle stop pub and it is not uncommon to have live acts, jam nights and things in there. And those are popular local spots. And if you're a visitor and you walk into one of those pubs, you feel like you're walking into a local party.

Tom Kelly: [00:22:24] You know, it reminds me a little bit of another Mountain Collective resort. It's a Snowbasin where the town of Ogden is again about 20 minutes away. And it has an amazing ski town scene after each winter day. So about 20 minutes to Jasper. And what are some of the other fun things that people can do if they're going to make a trip up there in the Jasper area?

Todd Noble: [00:22:46] There's a number of lakes that surround Jasper that get cleared off for skating. There's the rinks for playing hockey, city hockey or something like that. But then they'll also have like the big ovals going around the lake or perimeter of the lake for skiing. And you'll find that up at Pyramid Lake or you'll find that over at Lac Beauvert, over towards the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, a couple of lakes out that way. Then there's the canyon crawl during the summer, of course, there's just the canyon ... there's a huge canyon, water, waterfalls and that all freezes up. And then you end up, you can go on a tour, grab one of the local tour companies to guide you through the bottom of that canyon. Crawl. The winter is amazing. And then just even just the hiking trails in and around in the wintertime. So the people that take advantage of that with their fat biking or snowshoeing, there's an endless opportunity to just get out. I mean, you walk 5 minutes down the street and you can be onto a trail into the backcountry in no time. And it's one of those places, too, where we have festivals in the wintertime where you have like the horse drawn sleigh going down Main Street and the lights and just the slow kind of relaxed. It's a postcard. It's a winter wonderland postcard.

Tom Kelly: [00:23:57] I love the concept of going up the canyon to see the frozen waterfall. Is this something that's hike able snowshoe? How would you get there?

Todd Noble: [00:24:06] There's a number of spots that you can access that going up towards Marine Lake. It's about a that's under ten minute drive, maybe ten minute drive from town. And that's one where some people will just kind of take advantage of the trail that goes up from the bottom to the top towards Tea House there. And then I say there's the tour companies that can take you into the floor of the canyon and you can walk through there with the crampons. And it is recommended that you go through there with a professional, with a tour guide. They know the conditions and they would be able to safely guide you through that.

Tom Kelly: [00:24:42] Cool. Well, you've been immensely helpful in introducing us all to Marmot Basin. We're going to close this out with our collective dream segment. A time for me to ask you a few simple questions, some of it recapping what we've already talked about. But the first quintessential one, if you had to pick one favorite run, one favorite run at Marmot Basin, what would it be?

Todd Noble: [00:25:03] That's hard, you know, it depends.

Tom Kelly: [00:25:05] Always hard.

Todd Noble: [00:25:07] That's hard. I have to say, there's something special about going up the knob chair and being up on top of the resort there and picking one of the chutes down through towards Charlie's Bowl. There's a number of chutes there. So any one of those chutes are for me. It's just something special. It's been since I was a kid, you know, to get up that high and the knob chair was always a bit of a challenge, let's say. And it remains a challenge to this day for me, you know, and depending on the conditions and stuff. But to go up the knob and down into Charlie's Bowl or one of the chutes and then cruise all the way back down, that's that's for me, that's a classic market run.

Tom Kelly: [00:25:46] Cool. I know we've talked about this already, but your favorite cup of coffee on the mountain.

Todd Noble: [00:25:51] Oh, well, on the mountain, it's the. You get into the cappuccino bar and just grab whatever you like there. But then even down in town, there's a couple of great places, WickedCup or SnowDome, there's a couple of great places that serve excellent coffee. So that's on my way up. Maybe SnowDome or WickedCup and just driving out of town. And then and then, of course, do a couple of runs on Highway 16, straight to the cappuccino bar down to the base.

Tom Kelly: [00:26:15] What's the best lunch for you on the mountain? And it can be as out there as you want be that nachos, pizza, whatever it is. But what's your best lunch on the mountain?

Todd Noble: [00:26:24] You know, just going down. There's the lounge area at the base again, we've got the Eagles at Mid Mountain, which has a number of different items, and they're always kind of changing it up all the time, you know, Tom And that's what keeps it interesting, too. But, you know, you just can never go wrong with just a classic barbecue burger, right? I mean, burger and fries, middle of the day. That's perfect. But, you know, it depends. It depends. They're always changing it up. So that's what keeps it really interesting there.

Tom Kelly: [00:26:54] Cool. How about the gnarliest line you've ever skied at Marmot? The gnarliest line?

Todd Noble: [00:27:01] Yeah. That would be going up the Eagle Ridge chair and then hiking up in towards Cornice. There's. There's opportunities to enter those, those runs, Cornice run and things by just simply dropping in or you can come up a little bit, get a bit of a run to it and launch into it. And I do remember one of those times where I took advantage of the launching approach.

Tom Kelly: [00:27:26] And how far did you project?

Todd Noble: [00:27:30] Yeah, flew my way into that run and managed to keep it together. So. And once you get that under your belt, then everything else seems a little bit easier.

Tom Kelly: [00:27:38] I love it. We've all had those experiences. Your favorite local craft beer?

Todd Noble: [00:27:44] Oh, yeah. The Jasper Brew Pub. They remain creative. They keep changing things up, but they've got some beers there that never leave the Jasper the Bear Ale. That's a good one. I like that one. It's not too hoppy, but it does have that little kick to it in terms of hops and stuff. But my favorite there, and I've been asking them to bring it back, it was called the Blond & Cream Ale, but they haven't brought it back. I don't know. I guess I'm not that deep on them. Yeah, I will. You know, it'll be a mission of mine. But Jasper, the barrel.

Tom Kelly: [00:28:15] That’s a good one. I love those beers where you can only get it in the local area. You can't find it anywhere else. So you have to go to Jasper to get it.

Todd Noble: [00:28:23] Yeah, that's it. Yeah, you bet.

Tom Kelly: [00:28:25] Last question, Todd Noble Sum it all up. Marmot Basin and Jasper, what does it mean to you in just one word or just one word? Welcoming, welcoming, welcoming.

Todd Noble: [00:28:36] Yeah, it's just it's you get to the base, you can see the you can't see the whole mountain, but it is basically staring you right in the face. And every family member can look at that and they can pick a run and be excited about it.

Tom Kelly: [00:28:50] I love it. Welcoming experience in Jasper Marmot Basin, Todd Noble, thank you so much for joining us on Inside the Mountain Collective. All of us will be looking for you on the mountain for those inside tips this winter. Thanks, Tom.

Todd Noble: [00:29:02] Oh, excellent. My pleasure. Thanks, Tom.

Tom Kelly: [00:29:07] Thanks to Jasper, Alberta, local skier Todd Noble, for taking us on a tour of his mountain Marmot Basin. Make this the season you hike up to Marmot Peak or drop into Trey's embrace. If you do get up to Marmot Basin this winter, look up Todd, and have him show you around the mountain. The Mountain Collective pass in the Canadian Rockies is probably the single best pass value out there. You can piece together a collective trek to Marmot Basin, along with Banff, Sunshine Lake, Louise Revelstoke, Panorama and Sun Peaks. Thanks for joining us on Inside the Mountain Collective. Watch for more episodes coming up soon. I'm your host, Tom Kelly, and I'll see you up on the mountain this winter. Are you ready to build your own collective trek? The Mountain Collective Pass is your ticket to multi resort skiing or riding. Get yours today at Mountain Collective. You'll get two days at each participating resort, plus 50% off additional days. It is the perfect pass to take just one trip and be able to ski or ride at multiple resorts. Build your own collective trek Today. I'm your host, Tom Kelly. Thanks for listening and make sure to subscribe to get every episode delivered directly to you. Watch four more episodes of Inside the Mountain Collective, and I'll see you on the Mountain.