Yes, Kinosoo Ridge has night skiing. In a normal winter week that means Friday evenings under the lights, usually until 8 p.m., with the Blue Chair and Green Chair turning. That is the short answer. The better answer is that this is the cheapest, quietest night ski east of Edmonton — if you check the hours before you leave town, because Cold Lake weather does not care about your Friday plan.
SEO title: Kinosoo Ridge Night Skiing: Hours, Tickets, Lights and Friday Night Tips (2026)
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Meta description: Kinosoo Ridge night skiing near Cold Lake usually runs Fridays until 8 p.m. Hours, which chairs are open, night tubing, tickets, what to wear, and the drive from Edmonton.
Kinosoo night ski at a glance
Kinosoo Ridge sits about 14 kilometres east of Cold Lake, on French Bay, in the Municipal District of Bonnyville. It is a community hill with a lake view, not a Rockies resort. Night skiing is the after-work and after-school version of that hill.
| Detail | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Where | 14 km east of Cold Lake on Township Road 630 / French Bay |
| Night ski, typical week | Friday until 8 p.m., weather permitting |
| Night chairs | Blue Chair and Green Chair |
| Night tubing | Fridays, typically 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. |
| Daytime hours | Often Wed–Thu and Sat–Sun, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. |
| Hill size | About 41 acres, 12 runs, ~300 ft vertical on Blue |
| Adult day pass | Recently $48 (confirm current rates) |
| From Cold Lake | About 20 minutes |
| From Edmonton | About 3 hours via Highway 28 |
| Phone | 780-594-5564 |
| Live hours | kinosoo.ca/157/Hours-of-Operation |
Hours move. Delayed opens, wind holds, and extreme-cold closures are normal out here. Treat the table as the pattern, then confirm the same day on the official hours page and their Facebook or Instagram.
Night skiing at a small Alberta hill is the lights, the quiet, and the lake — not the vertical.
Does Kinosoo Ridge have night skiing?
Yes. Night skiing is listed as a standard winter activity on the resort page, and the hill lights most of the main trails. That does not mean every Friday of the season is automatically on.
In recent winters the reliable pattern has been Friday nights. They have also opened extra early-season nights — mid-December Monday and Tuesday sessions that ran 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. only — and they have floated midweek pop-up nights when the weather cooperates. If you are planning a specific date, you are planning around a Facebook post as much as a printed schedule.
City listicles about Alberta night skiing usually stop at Snow Valley, Rabbit Hill, Canyon, and Norquay. Kinosoo is the Lakeland answer those lists skip. If you already live in Cold Lake, Bonnyville, or along Highway 28, this is the hill you can reach after supper.
Kinosoo Ridge night ski hours
Here is the week that showed up again and again last season. It is a template, not a contract.
| Day | Usual hours | Night ski | Night tube |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Often closed | Only if they announce a pop-up | No |
| Tuesday | Often closed | Only if they announce a pop-up | No |
| Wednesday | 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. | Occasional pop-up nights | No |
| Thursday | 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. | Rare | No |
| Friday | 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. | Yes, until 8 p.m. | Yes, typically 3–7 p.m. |
| Saturday | 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. | Not the regular night slot | No |
| Sunday | 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. | No | No |
A few wrinkles from the last couple of seasons, because this is where people get burned:
- First nights of the season can be evening-only. Kitchen, rentals, and guest services close with the hill at 8 p.m.
- A delayed Friday open still often keeps night ski until 8 p.m. They have opened at 1 p.m. or 3 p.m. and called the rest of the day night-ski pricing.
- Tube Park can be closed even when night ski is on. Do not promise the kids both without checking.
- Extreme cold and high wind shut the place. They have cited about -32 C with windchill as a closure threshold.
If you only remember one URL, remember this one: kinosoo.ca/157/Hours-of-Operation. It lists which chairs and named runs are open. In summer it will look empty. In winter it is the page that saves you a 20-minute drive to a dark parking lot.
Which lifts and runs are open under the lights
Night skiing here is not “the whole mountain after dark.” On night-ski evenings they have operated the Blue Chair and the Green Chair. That is enough hill for laps. It is not enough hill if you showed up expecting a terrain-park session on a feature that only runs Saturday.
Blue Chair is the bigger side: base around 1,800 feet, summit around 2,100 feet, about 300 feet of vertical. Green Chair is shorter. Between them you get the family stuff and the steeper shots the locals actually use.
Named runs that appear on the live board include Jackfish, Aurora Alley, Katimavik, and Sidewinder off the Blue side, and Slow & Easy, Poplar’s Paradise, Birches, Ridge Run, Larry’s Leap, and The Bowl off the Green side. Bunny Hill and Kritters Crib are the learner zone. Terrain parks sit on the Green and Blue lines and get rebuilt each season. At night, assume only what the hours page says is spinning.
Most trails can be lit. That is the official line, and it is why the hill works after sunset at all. Visibility is fine. The snow can be firmer than it was at 2 p.m. Floodlights do not reset a freeze-thaw crust.
Tickets, rentals and “night ski pricing”
Kinosoo is cheap by Canadian ski standards. An adult day pass has been $48. Youth and kids are lower. Aggregators have also listed an afternoon ticket from 1 p.m. in the mid-$30s for adults. Season passes land in the $365 to $430 range depending on whether you buy early.
They do not always publish a separate “night-only” number on the main winter page. What they do publish, in the posts that matter, is night ski pricing — usually when a weather delay turns the rest of the day into an evening session. If you are arriving at 4:30 on a normal Friday, ask at the window whether you are buying a day ticket, an afternoon ticket, or the night rate. Do not guess from a blog written in August.
Rentals are on site. Adult daily rental has been around $34. Private lessons around $65. The rental shop and guest services stay open on night-ski evenings, which is the difference between a usable night and a decorative one. Tube Park tickets have been about $22 a person.
Buy and check current numbers at kinosoo.ca or the store linked from their socials. The MD of Bonnyville runs the hill. The phone is 780-594-5564.
Night tubing on the same Friday
Friday is the stacked night. Night ski until 8. Night tubing typically 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. under the same lights.
That is the family move. One adult can take the little kids on the tube hill while the other gets actual turns. Or you tube first while legs are fresh and ski the last hour when the tube park shuts. Do not assume both are open every Friday. They have run night ski with the Tube Park closed.
Tubing is its own ticket. A lift pass does not automatically include the tube carpet.
What night skiing at Kinosoo actually feels like
It feels smaller than the internet wants winter to feel. That is the point.
You park. You walk into a chalet that smells like fryer oil and wet gloves. You ride a quad that is not trying to move 3,000 people an hour. The lights come on over the trees and, on a clear night, you can still tell you are next to a very large frozen lake. Cold Lake does that even when you cannot see the water.
Crowds drop after the day crowd goes home. Lift lines get polite. Kids from town treat Friday night like a social. Adults from the base treat it like the only ski they will get that week. Nobody is here for a powder report. They are here because the hill is 20 minutes from supper.
It is colder than the daytime high on your phone. The wind off the lake does not care that the chair is only 300 vertical feet. If you grew up at Snow Valley or Rabbit Hill, the vibe is the same idea — community hill, lights, school-night energy — just further east and with a better view.
If you drove the Vegreville to Cold Lake corridor to get here, Friday night on the ridge is the thing that turns the trip from “we saw the lake” into “we actually used the winter.”
What to wear for a Cold Lake night ski
Dress for the evening low, not the afternoon high. Northeastern Alberta in January will happily sit at -20 C after dark with a wind that finds the gap in your wrist gaiter.
- Base layer that actually wicks. Cotton is a long, damp night.
- Insulating mid-layer plus a windproof shell. The chairs are short. The wait at the bottom can still bite.
- A face covering. Lights do not heat the air.
- Spare gloves in the car. Night skiing is how one wet glove ruins a Friday.
- You do not need a headlamp. The hill is floodlit. Bring one only if you are the person who likes being over-prepared.
Goggles with a lens that works under yellow-orange floodlights help more than a fancy jacket. If the snow has been sitting in sun all afternoon, expect it to firm up. Edges matter more at 7 p.m. than they did at noon.
How to get there after dark
From downtown Cold Lake it is a simple 20-minute drive east on 50 Avenue / Township Road 630. You will not miss the lights once they are on.
From Bonnyville it is a short hop. From Edmonton it is about three hours up Highway 28 through St. Paul and Bonnyville. From Lloydminster it is about two hours. From Lac La Biche, under two.
That Edmonton drive is the same Highway 28 run we mapped from the south and the same corridor as the Athabasca to Cold Lake drive. It is a weekend drive, not an after-work drive. If you live in the city, sleep in Cold Lake. Do not try to night-ski and be home by midnight unless you enjoy deer on the yellow line.
Winter highway rules still apply after the lifts close. Watch the ditches. We keep a straight wildlife safety note for the rest of the province; the short version on 28 after 8 p.m. is slow down and assume something is about to cross.
A simple Friday night plan from Cold Lake
| Time | Do this |
|---|---|
| 3:00 p.m. | Check hours and run board. If they are closed, stay in town. |
| 4:00 p.m. | Drive out. Rentals if you need them. Sign the online waiver before you arrive. |
| 4:30–6:30 p.m. | Laps on Blue and Green while there is still a little dusk in the sky. |
| 6:30 p.m. | Warm up at The Ridge. Kids often vote churros. Delayed Fridays sometimes mean wings. |
| 7:00–8:00 p.m. | Last laps. Tube park is usually done by 7. |
| 8:15 p.m. | Back to Cold Lake. Marina lights, hotel, or the highway south if you must. |
Eat, warm up, stay
The on-hill restaurant is The Ridge. It runs through the ski season, does Sunday brunch on day-hill weekends, and stays open on night-ski evenings. This is not Banff après. It is a fire, a plate of something hot, and kids dripping on the floor. That is sufficient.
There is no slopeside hotel. Sleep in Cold Lake — town hotels, motels, and the odd waterfront rental. The hill is close enough that you can eat in town and still make first night chair, or ski first and eat after 8.
If you have a daylight hour left the next morning, Cold Lake Provincial Park is three kilometres northeast of town off Highway 28. Groomed cross-country in winter, quiet forest, the same lake from a different shore. The night ski does not have to be the whole trip.
When they shut it down
Believe them when they say weather dependent.
They have closed for extreme cold and for high wind. They have delayed Friday to 1 p.m. or 3 p.m. and kept night ski anyway. They have cancelled a Thursday and then run a make-up evening. None of that is personal. A 300-foot hill with lake-effect wind is not going to hero its way through -35.
If you are coming from Edmonton, have a backup that does not require the lifts: the marina walk, a hotel pool, or turning around in Bonnyville for supper. A three-hour drive for a closed hill is how people decide northeastern Alberta is a scam. It is not. You just needed to refresh Instagram at noon.
Kinosoo night ski FAQ
Does Kinosoo Ridge have night skiing?
Yes. Night skiing is a regular part of the winter season, most often on Friday evenings until 8 p.m., with extra pop-up nights when the weather cooperates.
What time does night skiing end at Kinosoo?
Typical close is 8 p.m. on Friday night-ski evenings. Early-season nights have run 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Always check the live hours page the same day.
Which chairs run at night?
On night-ski evenings they usually run the Blue Chair and the Green Chair. Do not assume the whole hill is lit.
Is there night tubing at Kinosoo Ridge?
Yes. Friday night tubing has typically run from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. under the lights. It is a separate product from the ski ticket.
How much is a Kinosoo night ski ticket?
A regular adult day pass has been $48 recently, with cheaper afternoon tickets from 1 p.m. The hill sometimes switches a delayed day to night-ski pricing. Confirm at the window or store.kinosoo.ca.
Is night skiing good for beginners and kids?
Yes, if they already stand up. The hill is small, family-built, and quieter after dark. It is also colder. Start on the Green Chair side and leave before they freeze.
How far is Kinosoo Ridge from Cold Lake and Edmonton?
About 20 minutes east of downtown Cold Lake. About three hours from Edmonton via Highway 28.
When does night skiing start each season?
When they have enough coverage and the lights can go on safely — often mid-December. Opening week is announced on their Facebook and Instagram, not months in advance.
A Friday that actually works
Leave Cold Lake at 4:30. The sun is already thinking about quitting. The ridge is a string of orange lights against the trees. You rent if you have to, you do not linger in the shop, and you take the Green Chair first because your feet are still polite.
Two hours is enough. You will not ski the hill out. You will get cold in the fingers and warm in the chest. Someone in your group will want one more lap at 7:50 and someone else will already be thinking about the car heater. Both people are correct.
You will not confuse this with Lake Louise. You will also not spend $180 and two hours in a parkade. That is the whole pitch. A Lakeland Friday, under the lights, with a lake you cannot quite see and a town twenty minutes behind you.
Drive home with wet gloves on the dash. That is proof you went.
More from this corner of Alberta
If the night ski is why you pointed the car northeast, start with the daytime version of the same trip: our Vegreville to Cold Lake drive and the Athabasca to Cold Lake drive. Things to do in Vilna sits on the way if you like a giant mushroom with your winter weekend. For the rest of the oddball map, use 10 hidden gems most tourists miss. East-central detours that pair with a Highway 28 weekend: is Lloydminster in Alberta and the Wainwright bisons. If the mountains win the argument instead, the longer-haul version is the Jasper to Kamloops drive guide.
