silver star 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 almost caught up to this year with my ski trip posts, but one more to go before I can write about this year. In 2016, we spent Easter weekend at Big White and in 2017, we spent St. Paddy’s Day weekend at Sun Peaks. In 2018, we decided to time our trip with the Family Day holiday in order to make use of the long weekend and take less holiday time. Similar to our trip to Sun Peaks, most of our party drove out after work on Friday, but I decided to make it a half day again to avoid driving out in the dark. This year we went just before Valentine’s Day, so we had a bit of a Valentine’s party when we arrived. Since I’m always one of the first people to arrive, I’ve started a bit of a “welcome drinks” tradition, with green drinks for St. Paddy’s day in 2017 and pink drinks for Valentine’s day in 2018.

In more recent years we’ve had a harder time picking a resort because our group has really grown and a lot of the resorts don’t have group accommodations available on site. We’ve been wanting to go to Revelstoke for several years, but we just can’t seem to make it happen because of the accommodations. In 2018 we decided to rent two condos at Silver Star to accommodate what ended up being a group of 13 people. It did create a bit of a different vibe being separated into two groups, but both condos were located on the same floor, so we dragged the table from the smaller condo into the bigger condo so that we could all eat together. The added benefit with two condos was also that we had two hot tubs!

Silver Star has a pretty small ski village, but a lot of the accommodations border the slopes, including ours, so we had excellent ski-out access. What’s interesting about Silver Star is that the mountain is very clearly delineated between the “front side” and the “back side”. The front side is pretty clearly divided into 3 sections, two upper slopes and one lower slope, while the back side just has one main lift. I wish I could comment on the back side of the mountain, but I didn’t ski a single slope of the backside. The entire back side of the mountain is all black diamonds serviced by one lift. I’m not a high risk taker when it comes to skiing, so I tend to stick to blue and green runs on bigger mountains. That said, Silver Star is a smaller mountain and none of the slopes were that intense, so I think I probably would have done okay on the black diamonds. But some of our group tried one run on the back side on the first day and said the snow was awful and icy on that side of the mountain because of the cold conditions leading up to our trip, so I decided to skip it.

The other side of the mountain was a different story. Like I’ve said in some of my other posts, the direction of the slopes and the sun can make a huge difference on the quality of the runs. Our first day skiing Silver Star was absolutely gorgeous, with sun and blue skies the whole day! For this reason, I had a blast skiing the front side of the mountain and thought the conditions were pretty good. We started on the Comet Chair and I absolutely fell in love with this part of the mountain. The Trails were in great shape and the trees are pretty spacey in the upper area, so it’s really easy to do some fun glade runs. I honestly could have spent most of the trip on this chair and I would have had a great time!

The major downside to going skiing on the family day weekend is of course, the crowds. Silver Star isn’t the biggest ski resort, so the line-up for the Comet Chair was pretty huge and annoying to wait in at times. I was willing to wait because I enjoyed the runs so much, but a lot of the group didn’t want to waste the day in the line-ups, so we moved on to the Silver Woods chair, which is located on the lower section of the mountain. This part of the resort was okay, certainly better than the backside, but the elevation was a little bit too low and the conditions were not really good down there either. I did spend some time there and did most of the runs because they are shorter, but eventually we split into two groups, with one group staying on the lower runs, while I decided to join a group willing to wait for the Comet Chair.

Later in the day, we decided to give the Attridge Chair a try and I ended up spending the rest of the first day and a good portion of the second day on this part of the mountain. It was much less busy, but still had pretty good snow conditions. The slopes were a bit more technical on the Attridge side, but again, the trees were pretty spaced out, so there was lots of room to explore and try some new things. There was a lot of powder on this part of the mountain, so I took the opportunity to work on my powder skiing. I found it more challenging, but it was the good kind of challenging that makes you a better skier. I ended up having a pretty good time trying out some new runs and learning some better control on my skis. That said, at the end of the day, Comet Chair was still my favourite!

So it was a bit of a mixed bag at Silver Star in that many of the runs weren’t in great condition, but a lot of them were fantastic. There was the downside of huge crowds at the Comet Chair, but if you are willing to try some new things and check out the other parts of the mountain, the lift waits weren’t actually that bad. With 13 people, we didn’t ski together as a group, but I did a lot of hopping around between groups and I think I found a pretty good balance. A lot of people are definitely more adventurous than me, but my skiing is good enough that I can hold my own with most of the skiers and take the opportunities to get a little better myself. Good powder conditions definitely helped improve my confidence on Attridge Chair, whereas I was less inclined to take risks on the icy conditions.

We’ve kept our traditions going and I cooked Jiggs Dinner for the group again! It’s definitely a lot to manage, cooking for so many people, but it’s one of the few times I get to eat Jiggs Dinner throughout the course of the year, so I’m willing to keep doing it. I love coming together with friends over food, and when you’re the chef, there’s the added benefit of never having to do the dishes!

As a word of warning, Silver Star Ski Resort is located just outside of Vernon and can be reached from Vancouver traveling through either Kamloops or Kelowna. We drove through Kamloops on the way there and Kelowna on the way back. They are pretty much the same distance, I think driving time just varies depending on traffic and weather conditions. Having driven both routes, I would definitely recommend driving through Kelowna. It’s mostly highway driving with multiple lanes, which Kamloops to Vernon is not, so it makes for a nicer driving experience.