Big White 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’ve been saying this for ages now, but I want to start writing more about the outdoor adventure experiences I’ve been having in BC over the last 5 years. I haven’t done a lot with this blog over the past few years, except for writing about my occasional vacations, but I’ve been writing a lot on my second blog, which is a book blog (check it out here). I’ve developed some better writing habits, so I’d like to try and focus on writing more on this blog and perhaps reorganizing some of my content to make it a bit more of an adventure blog. I’m sure I’ll still post about travel when I get the opportunity, but those trips just aren’t as frequent as they were when I was in University and hopping off somewhere new every 4 months.

I’ve hiked over 100 trails in the past 5 years and would love to write about some of those trails. Since it’s winter, I’ve decided to write a few posts on some of my snowshoeing adventures and do a little ski series to motivate myself to write more. I’ve skied most of the local mountains in Vancouver and have made a ton of trips to Whistler, but I also go on an annual ski trip to the Interior every year. This tradition was born in 2016 because the Easter holidays that year were in March and I wanted to make use of the extra vacation days. My original plan was to spend the weekend at Big White Ski Resort with Seth and my best friend and her boyfriend, but I ended up getting an awesome deal on a condo that could sleep 10 people and we decided to fill it with some of our other friends.

Since then, we’ve gone to a different ski resort every year, but Big White still sticks out as being one of my favourites. It’s located just past Kelowna and is about a 5 hour drive out of Vancouver. Because of Easter holidays, we left on Good Friday morning and arrived mid-afternoon, but every year since we’ve left after lunch or after work. Our condo was located right on the mountain with ski out access and we had this huge window seat in the living room looking out onto the ski slopes and surrounding mountains. The resort also had a huge group hot tub and we spent a lot of time chilling in the evenings.

On top of the awesome accommodation, we also had excellent conditions. It was sunny the first day and we had some amazing views. It clouded over in the afternoon and snowed all night and into the next day, so even though we didn’t get the views on the second day, we got some really awesome powder. Big White’s tagline is “It’s the Snow”, and I would have to agree because it had some of the best snow conditions and is the latest in the season that we’ve ever gone skiing.

One of the things I liked most about Big White, which I don’t think has been replicated at any of the other resorts I’ve been to, is that the slopes go right through the ski village. Until I started exploring some of the resorts outside Vancouver, I didn’t realize just how many ski hills there actually are in BC and was surprised to learn that not all of them have villages. This has made it a bit of a struggle when planning our trip in later years because we really want to go somewhere with group accommodations and a fun atmosphere, but sadly some of the resorts just don’t seem to offer much on-mountain accommodation.

But we were located right in the village at Big White and there were several fun places to explore around. We had dinner in the village one evening and made our own meals other nights. It’s always so surreal driving out to the Interior (and really to any of the mountains in the lower mainland) because the conditions change so much on the way out. It was late March, so we didn’t really see any snow on the drive out to Kelowna (except on the Coquihalla) and it was pretty bare most of the drive up to Big White. But it was a huge contrast because the mountain ended up getting so much snow on our second day skiing and overnight, that the drive was totally transformed on the way out. We ended up having to shovel our vehicles out after a pretty heavy dump overnight and the plows were busy running the mountain road down to Kelowna all morning on our way out.

Big White is a huge mountain and has a ton of trails. I took a look at the ski map to jog my memory and I don’t remember it being quite as large as it actually is. I’ve definitely become a better skier since 2016 and I’m wishing I could go back and try out some of their glade runs. Overall the mountain has a nice mix because there are several big chairs running the whole length of the mountain, as well as several smaller chairs just running to the peaks. The Gem Lake Express Chair is quite separate from the rest of the mountain and this is where we spent almost our entire second day doing powder run after powder run.

Overall, we had such a great time at Big White that it inspired us to check out a different mountain every year, and we have our 4th annual trip coming up in a few weeks! Our group has grown and we’ve worked out a lot of the details of the trip down to a pretty precise science and have developed a lot of traditions that we keep going every year. It’s always one of the highlights of my winter season.