I’ve skied Stokely numerous times over the past 30 years. Most recently, I’ve made an annual pilgrimmage and spent 5 days in early February, in each of the last 5 years. I’ve done their 6-hut challenge twice, and this year we created our own new challenge: the outer limits or outer perimeter challenge. Each of these requires the skier to do about 42 km in a day. This is a wonderful place to ski! Everything is top-notch. With 100 km of trails, there is something for everyone.

I don’t know why the review above would give less than 5 stars for trail design; the reviewer seems to think it’s not suitable for beginners, but there is an extensive area in the middle of the network that is flat to gently rolling, which is ideal for novice skiers. I’m also dubious about the stated amount of skate trails. I don’t have detailed statistics, but my impression is that almost all the trails are now groomed for both skate and classic. There is only a small area in the south-east corner (the Roth and McGuffin trails) that is not groomed for skating. A couple of other corrections: starting this year, they do not provide paper maps. Instead, they encourage skiers to load the map on their phone.(in order to reduce paper waste) However, this is hardly necessary, because every single trail intersection has a posted map, plus directional signage.

Also, in my many visits to Stokely, I’ve never seen the toboggan hill mentioned in the above review. You can ski Stokely as a day skier, but it’s far better to go and spend a few days there as an overnight guest. Three excellent meals per day, skiing (or snowhoeing) and the complementary happy hour each evening are all included. When you consider what you are getting, it is not expensive.

One unfortunate fact of life at Stokely is that their open season is not very long. This is not due to lack of snow, but a lack of skiers who are willing to make the long trek to get there. Consequently, the lodge is only open from just before Christmas until the end of the March break. They have tons of great snow both before and after these dates, but they simply can’t attract enough skiers to make it financially viable to open. I have only one small complaint about Stokely and that is their trail condition reporting is not very good. They do not post conditions every day, and when they do report, it’s not very detailed. A reliable, daily, comprehensive report on snow, weather and grooming status would be a huge improvement.