Hit the heights across Canada’s spectacular peeks

No matter where you travel in Canada you’ll discover record-breaking natural wonders, feats of engineering wizardry and marvels of man-made ingenuity. Explore Canada on a cross-country peak-to-peak tour that includes the world’s most extraordinary gondola, Canada’s highest mountain, its tallest tower and its most powerful tides.

The new Peak 2 Peak Gondola – world’s highest and longest unsupported lift span

Officials are calling this phenomenal $50-million smooth-gliding ride on the new Peak 2 Peak Gondola? opening December 12 at Whistler Blackcomb, BC ? “a record-breaking engineering feat that will amaze the world.” Picture 28 sky cabins running along giant rope spools between four towers covering 4.4 km (2.73) miles. The distance between the two towers that are the farthest apart is a staggering 3.024 km (1.88) miles – the highest and longest unsupported cable car span in the world. One sky cabin will depart every 49 seconds and the Peak 2 Peak Gondola can whisk skiers between Whistler and Blackcomb in 11 minutes, carrying up to 2050 people per hour each way.

Dreaming of skiing both Symphony and 7th Heaven in short order? After December 12, you can do both before lunch! Peak2peakgondola.com

Longest peak ski season in North America

Whistler Blackcomb is also home of North America’s longest ski season, from November to June ? (June 3rd is traditionally the last day of winter operations) ? and boasts the largest skiiable terrain in North America at 3.307 ha (8,100 acres). Add to that one vertical mile, three glaciers, 12 alpine bowls, and North America’s longest intermediate ski run at 5.5 kilometers in length with a 5,000 vertical feet drop, and maybe its time to set your own records for speeding to Whistler Blackcomb this season. Whistlerblackcomb.com

Canada’s highest peak has the largest base circumference on earth

In southwestern Yukon in the pure pristine spectacle of Kluane National Park, Mount Logan, Canada’s highest peak and the second highest mountain in North America (after Mount McKinley), rises an estimated 5,959 metres (19,551 feet) into the sky. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Mount Logan’s exact height is hard to pinpoint, since it is still rising in elevation due to tectonic uplifting.

With its massive multiple peaks ? almost a dozen spire above its 20 km long and 5 km wide summit plateau ? Mount Logan has the largest base circumference of any mountain on Earth. A charter flightseeing tour will take you over the vast expanse of Logan’s unclimbed peaks, clear lakes, awe-inspiring icefields, and the wild and wooly grizzly and black bear habitat in Kluane National Park. Summitsofcanada.ca

Canadian mountaineer reaches seven peaks in world’s first “grand slam”

It was another Canadian record-breaker, Invermere, BC-born Patrick Morrow, who on August 5, 1986 became the first person in the world to complete mountaineering’s “grand slam,” climbing the highest peak on each of seven continents. His 14-year quest to scale the world’s Seven Summits eventually brought him back home to settle near the Canadian Rockies, where the adrenalin-pumping sport of ice climbing reigns supreme. Rockies-ice.com

The CN Tower elevator ride, the peak of engineering ingenuity

Canada’s tallest building, the CN Tower in Toronto, ON has created an eye-opening new thrill experience by adding glass panels to the floor of its newly enhanced elevator ride, already named #1 on the “World’s Top 10 Elevator Rides” by National Geographic’s Journeys Of A Lifetime: 500 of the World’s Greatest Trips. Now North America’s first and the world’s highest glass-bottomed elevator offers a view 345 metres (1,136 feet) straight down. Travelling at a speed of 22 km/15 mph, it rockets visitors to the top of the tower in 58 seconds. At a height of 553.33 metres (1,815 feet, 5 inches) the CN Tower is Canada’s National Tower.

More than two million people each year ride the elevator to the top of this Canadian engineering marvel that has claimed first place as the world’s tallest tower for more than 32 years (only recently surpassed by the Burj Dubai building now under construction in Dubai). Cntower.ca

World’s highest tides peak in Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy

The Bay of Fundy’s eight-knot current makes it the top contender for the strongest and fastest current in the world. Everyday, 100 billion tonnes of sea water flow in and out of the Bay of Fundy, equal in one tide cycle to the flow of all the rivers on earth. High and low tides reach their peaks on average every six hours and 13 minutes. And now this fierce barrage of tidal power may be on the leading edge of tidal power technology with the Nova Scotia Department of Energy declaring it “the most effective site for tidal power generation in North America.”

Visitors flock to the Bay of Fundy to see the world’s mightiest tidal flow, the bay’s 12 species of whales, its vast rock cliffs, mud flats and wind-scraped sandstone sculptures. A site of major fossil and dinosaur discoveries, the Bay of Fundy is competing to become one of the world’s New 7 Wonders of Nature. Bayoffundytourism.com

Peak travel time: 10 minutes to cross the world’s longest continuous bridge over sea

The curved 12.9 km (8 mile) long span of Canada’s Confederation Bridge arches over the Northumberland Strait linking the provinces of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island and is not only Canada’s longest bridge, it is the longest continuous bridge in the world over ice-covered waters. The bridge has 310 street lights, 17 cameras, and 7,500 drainage ports. It took four years of construction, more than 5,000 local workers and a cost of $1 billion to build this fixed-link ocean crossing to pastoral PEI. Now peak travel time to cross is a mere 10 minutes, earning the rightful slogan “The Longest Bridge. The Shortest Route.” Conferedationbridge.com

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