A Guide to Ski Resorts near Vancouver

February 12, 2025December 10, 2025 / Maria / Leave a comment

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!

Hiking Ptarmigan Ridge

January 2, 2025December 17, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

I don’t do a lot of hiking in Washington, but I make a point of trying to go there at least once every year in the Fall to hike near Mount Baker. I’ve read that North Cascades National Park is one of the lesser visited parks in America, which is a shame because it’s a really beautiful place! Mount Baker is technically outside of the park, but it is in the Snoqualmie National Forest/Mount Baker Wilderness Area. It’s approximately 2 hours from Vancouver, so it’s really accessible and it is absolutely gorgeous in the Fall!

Brandon and I go on an annual Thanksgiving Day (Canadian) hike every year and this year we decided to do the Ptarmigan Ridge hike, which leaves from the Mount Baker ski area. My first hike in this area was in 2018 and I hadn’t been back to this specific parking lot since pre-pandemic. It’s wild how much more popular the area is now than 5 years ago! The most popular trail is to Artist Point, which is a small lookout at the top of the pass. In the summer, you can drive all the way up to the parking lot at the top of the pass, and from there it’s a short hike to the summit. However, when it starts to snow, they close the gate and you have to hike an additional 3km each way to get to the parking lot.

I’ve never been to Mount Baker when the gate has been open, so it was a great surprise to arrive and discover that we could save 6km of hiking by parking at the upper lot. You do need a day pass to park here, which you can get in advance online, at the Visitor Centre, or in the parking lot (at the base of the ski hill only, for other hikes you’ll have to utilize one of the other options). It’s $5USD for the entire car, so it’s very reasonably priced.

The Ptarmigan Ridge hike starts from the upper lot (or add on 3km each way from the lower lot) and follows the ridgeline all the way to the East Portal, which is basically as far up the slope of Mount Baker as you can climb before you hit glacier travel. It’s a long trail, 25km round trip if you hike from the lower lot, and it was early October, so we had limited daylight. We weren’t planning to hike the entire trail, we just planned to hike along the ridge until we got tired or had to turn around for daylight reasons. But by skipping the trail from the lower lot, we were able to cut out a lot of elevation gain and ended up doing the entire trail!

I was with my friends Brandon and Simmer; it was a beautiful sunny day and we were all in awe of the gorgeous landscapes. The entire trail is in the alpine, so you have incredible views along the entire 19km of trail. There is a fair bit of elevation gain (~500m), but it’s a pretty gentle slope until just before the Portals, so it was a very enjoyable hike.

The trail starts from the parking lot and shares a trailhead with the Chain Lakes Loop. I did this hike with Lien and Emily a few years ago and it’s another super scenic trail. It was really busy, but I think more people were doing Chain Lakes rather than Ptarmigan Ridge. Chain Lakes is a much shorter hike and it’s a loop, so you don’t have to re-do any terrain. The Chain Lakes trail passes through the lower lot, so it’s a good one to do when the gate is closed because you have to hike the 3km between parking lots either way. If the gate is open, do Ptarmigan Ridge.

I recommend doing both of these trails in the Fall because they are both completely exposed. It’s a gorgeous hike, but I can’t imagine how hot it would be in the dead of summer because there’s very little shade on either hike.

The trails start together and cut across the bowl on the back of Table Mountain. Once you circle around the mountain, they branch and Chain Lakes continues around the rest of Table Mountain, while Ptarmigan Ridge heads towards Mount Baker. Ptarmigan Ridge starts with a downhill section, and then you spend the rest of the day climbing. Like I said, there are views the entire way, but you basically follow the ridge from point to point and there’s a few really nice places to stop along the way.

We were making good time, so we decided to just keep pushing. The closer we got to the end of the trail, the more we wanted to reach the end, but we were also getting very hungry. There’s a wilderness site called Camp Kiser just before the Portals and we decided to stop there for lunch. It’s a steep climb up to the Portals, so we weren’t intending to do that part.

Simmer hiked a huge container of homemade butter chicken up the mountain, so we shared a really nice lunch on the side of Mount Baker, admiring the glacial views along the foothills. The problem was that we were staring up at the Portals the entire time we were eating and the longer I looked at it, the more I wanted to climb it. So we decided to shorten the break and we all trekked uphill for another half hour to reach the top. I’m so glad we did because the view of the glacier was absolutely phenomenal and I felt really accomplished when we summited.

The hike back was relatively uneventful. It was 19km of hiking, so it was a pretty aggressive hike for October. We started around 10:30am and were hiking for ~7.5 hours including our lunch break. It was faster on the way back and we were ahead of the fading light, but we definitely had tired feet on the way back. I would probably have preferred to start the hike a little bit earlier. But we had the Portals viewpoint all to ourselves, so timing wise, it all worked out. There is a small lake where you can camp off trail around the three quarter point, so I’d definitely be interested to return in the future to spend the night.

I always have a great time when I go to the Mount Baker Wilderness Area and this hike was no exception! It’s a big day and I recommend the Fall season, but definitely a hike worth adding to your bucket list!

Hiking Chain Lakes Trail

October 27, 2021August 30, 2021 / Maria / 3 Comments

The final trail in my little ‘Fall hiking in Washington’ series is the Chain Lakes Trail that leaves from the ski area at Mount Baker. Me, Lien, and Emily had visited the previous year in March to snowshoe Artist Point and were totally awed by the views, so we decided to come back in the fall for a different view. It was Thanksgiving Weekend in October 2019, just one week after me and Lien had hiked Yellow Aster Butte. This time we were joined by Emily and my friend Amy, who flits in and out of my life every now any then. We never really know when she’s going to appear and disappear again, but it’s fun to hike with her!

We had Thanksgiving dinner at my house on Sunday night and then made an early departure on Monday morning to cross the border. Traditionally, me and Brandon have always gone on a Thanksgiving Monday hike (3 years running), but this year he went on holiday and bailed on me, so I had to console myself with my other companions. I really liked both Yellow Aster Butte and Chain Lakes, but of the two, I would definitely have to give the edge to Chain Lakes. At 11.5km, it has half the elevation gain of Yellow Aster Butte, just 375m. The trail starts in the backcountry parking lot at the ski hill. Be sure to get and print out the parking pass online before you go because there’s no where to get it on the mountain. It’s only $5 and I’m told you can get it at the visitor center at the bottom before you drive up, but I’ve never once seen it open on the weekend.

Chain Lakes is one of those rare trails that is scenic the ENTIRE trail. You’ve already driven up most of the elevation gain to get to the ski hill and from there, the trail continues up to the summer parking lot for Artist Point. In the summer, you can drive almost the whole way up to Artist Point, but at some point in September they close the road. Hiking up the road is the least scenic part of the trail, but still has really nice views looking down into the big bowl that’s popular among backcountry skiers. We decided to skip the Artist Point viewpoint since we’d already done it and instead continued down the other side of the parking lot into the backcountry. I think it’s a bit of an understated part of the trail, but it was one of my favourite parts. You hike right across the slope of Table Mountain, looking out towards Mount Baker.

From the Skyline Divide Trail, I felt like I was so close to Mount Baker that if I continued hiking I would eventually reach it (you can reach the foothills, but then the trail ends). But from the Chain Lakes Trail, you really are on the trail that goes up to the top of Mount Baker (albeit this is only for experienced mountaineers). It looked like if we just crested a few more hills we’d pretty much be there, but of course, it’s further then it looks as the size of the mountain dwarfs everything surrounding it and can be a bit misleading. Once you get to the end of Table Mountain, the trail turns to continue around the mountain and over to the chain lakes part of the trail. You can also hike along the top of Table Mountain, which may have to be an adventure for another day.

The first lake you come to is Mazama Lake. You can camp there, but it’s pretty small and not the most scenic, so if you’re overnighting, I’d recommend one of the other lakes instead. After Mazama, you come to Iceberg lake, which is the biggest and has staggering views looking up at the steep cliffs that surround the lake. This is where we decided to stop for lunch and enjoy the views before starting our climb back up the pass to the top of the trail.

One of the awesome things about Chain Lakes, in addition to the fact that the entire hike is scenic, is that it’s a loop trail, so you don’t have to do any return on the trail. It starts to climb around Iceberg Lake until you reach Haynes Lake, which is where I’d recommend branching off to camp. From there it gets really steep. There’s some great views looking back down the trail at Iceberg lake and you continue climbing to the top of the pass before starting to descend back into the bowl we were looking at from the start of the trail. It seemed like most people were doing the trail in the opposite direction as us, starting with the steep climb up the bowl. I’d recommend going the same way as us though because then you get to finish the hike with what was, in my opinion, the best view.

The view from the top of the pass is really unreal. The mountains stretch out around you in every direction and as you climb up the side of the Mazama dome, you really feel like you’re on top of the world. We’d already had lunch, but we decided to stop and have a break to make tea so that we could enjoy the view for a little bit longer! Even though we still had a few kilometers left to go, from the top we could pretty much see the trail down to the bottom almost the whole way there. We continued from the pass and started the long descent down the bowl to the parking lot. We were basically undoing all of the elevation from the rest of the hike in this stretch, which is why I recommend doing the hike from the other direction, that way the ascent is more gradual, with a few flat parts in between as you climb up. The descent down the bowl though is hard on the knees, so something to take into consideration as well.

The trail switchbacks for a while until you finally reach the bottom. It weaves through the valley and you pass by a few more lakes and the most quaint little rock bridge. Seriously, there’s no part of this trail that is not scenic, and even a few minutes before the parking lot, we were still stopping to take pictures of things. Except for Emily, who was badly in need of a washroom and sprinted the last 15 minutes of the trail to get to the outhouse.

Sadly that was our last adventure in the North Cascades. I returned the following winter with Carolyn and Brandon to snow camp on Artist Point, but unfortunately with Covid, we haven’t been able to return. I was hoping to do a few hikes in the summer and fall again, but sadly I’ll just have to wait until next year (hopefully). Either way, if you’re from Washington, I’d definitely recommend hitting up the North Cascades, and if you’re Canadian, put in on your bucket list!