Apex ski resort

I’ve been living in Vancouver for over 10 years now and I’ve been downhill skiing every single one of those years. Most of my time has been spent at Whistler Blackcomb, but I make a point to try and ski a new resort every year. I haven’t made it to every ski resort on this list, but I’m sure I’ll get to them all one day!

Local Mountains

Cypress Mountain

Cypress is the biggest of the local mountains and the first resort I skied in BC. The resort is split between Black Mountain and Mount Strachan and has 4 major chair lifts. It’s a very busy mountain on weekends, so my preference is hitting up the mountain after work for night skiing! The highlight of this mountain is the view of Howe Sound from the Sky Chair.

Mount Seymour

A group of snowshoers head downhill in winter on a snowy mountain with snow covered trees and a view of Vancouver city in the background from Brockton Point in Seymour Mountain Provincial Park in British Columbia, Canada.

Seymour is a great family mountain. It has two lifts and is a great little mountain if you have kids or are learning to ski. It will be busy here as it’s a popular location for snowshoeing and touring as well. My favourite way to visit is to skin up to Brockton Point on my touring skis and then ski down through the resort. It’s a great place for night skiing and sunset views!

Grouse Mountain

Grouse is probably the most well known resort in the city as the ski slopes can be seen from all over the lower mainland, especially when they’re lit up for night skiing. Believe it or not, I have never actually skied Grouse, mostly because it’s the smallest resort and you have to take a gondola from the base to access anything, but I’ve heard the views are unparalleled!

Resorts within a 2-hour drive

Whistler Blackcomb

A photo of Peak Chair as seen from Roundhouse at Whistler. There is a Canadian flag in the foreground and snow covered mountain peaks on a blue sky day in the background, at Whistler, BC.

Whistler Blackcomb is by far the most well known ski resort on this list, and for good reason. It’s a premier ski resort and it has access to an incredible amount of terrain. I ski Whistler Blackcomb for 5-6 days every year and I never get tired of it. It will always be busy, so embrace the early morning rise to get in a few good runs before the crowds really pick up! My favourite areas to ski are 7th Heaven on Blackcomb and Symphony on Whistler.

Sasquatch Mountain

Sasquatch is a small resort north of Harrison. It’s surprisingly close to the city, but difficult to access because it has a gravel road that requires snow tire chains. But it’s a really nice resort with 3 chairs and low crowds (even on weekends). It didn’t have much powder when I visited it, but I’ve heard it can get a nice amount of powder and the runs seem designed around this, with lots of gladed tracks down the mountain.

Manning Park

A view of lightning lakes covered in snow during the winter, with the trees and mountains in the background on a cloudy day in E.C. Manning Provincial Park in BC.

Manning Park is another small resort. It’s further than Sasquatch, but generally easier to access. The challenge with Manning is that there are very limited accommodations near the resort. So plan to either drive up and back in a day, or stay in Sunshine Valley or Hope. I adore Manning Park for its unlimited recreation activities and while its cross country trails are much more well known, it has a nice downhill resort as well.

Mount Baker

I have explored a lot around Mount Baker, but I haven’t had the opportunity to ski there yet (not for lack of trying, I had to cancel 2 trips). Odds are, most of the people skiing Mount Baker will be from BC to take advantage of the high amount of powder they get. The North Cascades are a beautiful place to visit and I love spending time in this area. There’s no where to stay on the mountain, but you can stay in Glacier, Bellingham, or drive there and back in a day.

Resorts within a 3-5 hour drive

Sun Peaks

Sun Peaks is the next biggest resort after Whistler. It’s located just north of Kamloops and is a great ski destination! There are tons of accommodations and there is lots of terrain to explore. The runs span both sides of the highway and have a huge variety of alpine and glade runs. Some of the smaller resorts on this list can be visited in a day, but definitely give yourself at least 2 days at Sun Peaks!

Big White

Of all the resorts I’ve visited in the interior, Big White is probably my favourite. It gets great snow and it has some fabulous runs. It’s located east of Kelowna and has tons of chair lifts to keep you busy. I really liked the ski village in Big White – Sun Peaks felt really large, while other resort villages felt a bit small. I may have a soft spot for this resort because it was the location of my first group ski trip, but I definitely want to go back in the future.

Silver Star

Silver Star Resort is located north of Vernon and is smaller than Big White and Sun Peaks. It also attracts less crowds, but can feel busy due to the smaller number of chair lifts. I’ll admit, Silver Star wasn’t my favourite resort, but I think it’s mostly because it didn’t have great conditions when I visited. It has a really nice village and I’d definitely be willing to give it another try!

Apex

Apex is one of the lesser known resorts in the interior (or at least, it feels that way). It’s located further south, east of Princeton, but west of Penticton. It gets less crowds than the other resorts I visited, but it had some truly awesome powder! I’m not sure if this is a common theme, but I have heard it tends to get dumped on in the winter. It’s a small village, but my favourite part was the forest skate loop!

Mount Washington

If you want to visit Vancouver Island, Mount Washington is pretty much your only option. Take the ferry to Nanaimo and then drive north to Courtenay. Mount Washington is on the boundary of Strathcona Provincial Park and while the road up the mountain isn’t it great shape, it is a really nice resort for skiing and snowshoeing!

Stevens Pass

I discovered this resort because it’s included in my edge card/epic pass for Whistler. It’s located east of Seattle and is incredibly popular among the locals. There’s no ski village, so we stayed in Skykomish and drove into the resort in the morning. Be prepared for terrible traffic coming out of Seattle and aim for an early start. The lift passes will sell out and the parking lot will fill up, both of which will result in you being denied entrance. But it’s a great ski resort with some nice terrain if you plan accordingly!

I’m finally up to date on my ski series and I can write about my latest trip, which I went on in late February, to Apex Mountain resort. I’m super excited to write about this one because it ended up being one of my favourite ski trips! Originally we had planned to visit Revelstoke this year, but there are limited group reservations available on the mountain and we couldn’t find anything big enough for our growing group, so we ended up renting a chalet at Apex instead.

I’ll admit, I’d never heard of Apex and I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but we ended up getting some fantastic conditions along with an amazing condo, making for one of the best trips. I’ve heard Apex called one of BC’s hidden gems of a ski resort because it is one of the lesser known resorts and therefore sees fewer visitors than some of the other resorts. We got really lucky this year though because it snowed all over the province for pretty much 2 weeks before our trip, including the day we drove out there, so we had unbelievable conditions on the mountain! Our first runs on Saturday were some of the best skiing I’ve had in a long time because there was about a foot of undisturbed powder on every run.

For those unfamiliar with the resort, Apex is located about 4.5 hours out of Vancouver in the southern part of BC. We drove through Manning Park and Princeton to get to the mountain and it’s about 30 minutes south of Penticton. Last year we visited Silver Star on the Family Day weekend, and while it was great to make use of the holiday, it was really crowded! So this year we went the weekend after Family Day, so there were barely any crowds on the mountain. I don’t think I ever waited longer than 5-10 minutes to get on a lift and most times there was no wait at all.

Apex is definitely smaller than some of the other mountains we’ve visited, but it had a really nice variety of runs. It only has 2 lifts, but like I said, it never felt crowded. We started our day on the far side of the mountain on Stocks Chair, which is a 3-person lift. It’s not a very fast lift, but we spent most of our first morning there because it has a lot of really nice blue runs, great for getting warmed up. Then in the afternoon we switched over to the main chair, which is a high speed quad chair. Many of the runs on the main lift are blacks, so we mostly stuck to the blue runs on the first day.

On the second day I got a little more adventurous and spent the whole day with my sister, Emily, who just recently moved to BC. We slowly worked our way through a good portion of the blacks. I find the black diamond runs at Whistler to be pretty intimidating, but I like trying out the black runs at smaller mountains and working on improving my skills. We started with some of the shorter black runs and slowly worked our way up. Plus, it was a great time to try some tougher runs since the snow conditions were so good! Some of the runs got a bit chewed up over two days, but it was surprising how many still had some really nice powder on them! My only complaint about the mountain would be that they need to update their map because there are a lot of runs on the mountain that aren’t actually showing on the map right now and it made it a bit confusing trying to figure out where you are.

Two people skate along the forest ice track at Apex Ski Resort in the middle of winter in BC.

As usual, we ate all our meals in our condo. This was our 4th trip and 3 out of 4 of the trips we’ve had ski-out access. We had ski-out access at this place too, which makes for a really nice experience when you can come back to the warm condo at lunch to eat and have a beer. As usual, I cooked traditional Newfoundland Jiggs Dinner on the first evening and Brandon cooked hotpot on our second evening. Carolyn and Seth made some lasagnas and chili for lunches, which we paired with leftover turkey sandwiches. Finally, Karen cooked us the most wonderful hot breakfast every morning!

We found our condo on Airbnb and we definitely paid a pretty penny for it, but it was one of my favourite places we’ve stayed. There were 15 of us staying there in total and we had a great view of the hill and a nice balcony with a hot tub.

While we didn’t spend much time in Apex Village, we did discover the most precious gem hidden in the trees! Apex has an adventure skating loop that runs through the woods for ~1km. I’m so pleased that we actually did it – I saw it on a facebook post a few months ago and tagged everyone in it because it looked so quaint. You always see those kinds of cool things on social media, but you almost never go, so I was thrilled that we actually got the chance to go to this one. A few of us brought skates with us and everyone else was able to rent them in the village. The loop is really nicely done and only costs $4, although it happened to be free on the day we visited! Speaking of costs, the lift pass at Apex is also incredibly reasonably priced. I believe it’s about $85 a day, but you can buy passes in advance at Costco for just $65!

The amazing ski conditions, small crowds, and awesome accommodations all combined to make this one of my favourite ski trips.