Jumbo Glacier Resort, a Whistler-like three season village developers have spent decades trying to build in the East Kootenays, is the subject of a documentary by Nick Waggoner. In the spring of 2015 I spent a week on assignment for Kootenay Mountain Culture magazine with Waggoner while he shot the key piece of the film -- an interview with the development's architect Oberto Oberti -- on a mountain top that would be the crown jewel of the resort, if it ever got approval.
The following is an excerpt from one of the many drafts that led to the final piece. That article can be read in full on the MOUNTAIN CULTURE MAGAZINE website.
"It is mid April and the heli-skiing operations in the East Kootenays are shut down for the season, leaving Nick Waggoner on the hook to charter a ride. The plan is for the 29-year-old skier and filmmaker to deliver architect Oberto Oberti to the 3,000 metre-high summit of Glacier Dome.
It’s here the 71-year-old resort designer hopes to one day install the highest ski lift on the continent. Oberti’s quarter century-long quest to turn that spot into the crown jewel atop a Kitzbühelesque resort in the wild heart of the Jumbo Valley represents a very different vision for the land than that of many of the region’s residents — including the Ktunaxa Nation, a vocal and well-funded environmental group and, as Oberti would later find out, Waggoner himself..."