 Poster: A snowHead
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My daughter is doing a season in SunPeaks, Canada next year so thinking of going there in March. Any advice on the area and what’s the skiing like. I can ski all terrain, or so I thought but I tore my ACL in Feb this year (first morning) but should be fit again for next season.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@Jonesj, love it, been twice. As benign or gnarly as you like
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Wonderful resort let down by awful lifts.
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@Whitegoldbrother - Curious - do you think they are worse than other Canadian resorts or just that Canadian resorts are generally worse than Europe?
I've not been there specifically as I've friends at SilverStar but I've heard good things and for me all of the Okanagan resorts are the sweetspot between Coast and the Rockies.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I visited in March this year - no idea what @Whitegoldsbrother is on about as the lift system was pretty good except for one lift - Burfield - slow and very very long. It might be argued this serves the more interesting terrain, so YMMV there.
Skiing is fairly gentle - long rolling groomers, some decently steep, but we didn't have the conditions to go exploring off-trail. Nice walkable village. Okanagan wine an unexpected delight.
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@holidayloverxx, that's good to hear. We're off there in Feb next year after a couple of trips to Banff. Looking forward to it v much.
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Friends live in Kelowna and went for a long weekend this winter. They liked it less than Big White and Silver Star, but if my daughter (if I had one) was doing the same, I'd be going to visit
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I really like Sun Peaks, been there two or three times. Whilst there, you could take a side bar trip to Big White and Silver Star.
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I've been quite a lot over the years. I would say it's an excellent place to "do a season", because it's more "real" than massive resorts whilst being big enough to have an actual community with a real school and stuff. If you're a "dancing on the tables" type of person go somewhere else.
The hotel development is not large, so there are not that many choices. The "Grand" is fine - spacious by EU standards - and about 50m from the best breakfast cafe and the main lifts, ski in ski out. It's not the sort of place you're going to have to line up for lifts. The lifts are fine, quick and efficient, mostly chairs. As someone said the locals are extremely friendly.
I didn't get there this season, but these are from 2022:
The main resort base is where the green label is. The secondary "Burfield" base (with car parking and some condos) is where the Burfield lift reaches the road. It's a flat walk between the two at road level, or you can loop around to it as shown by the red track. The "return" section of that is a cat road and slow, but I'm on a snowboard and it's easy enough.
They have the only not-quite FIS speed ski races in north America on the "headwall" there. Otherwise it's lots of big empty runs with a variety of surfaces. Don't go if you like crowds. The "Morrisisey" lifts on the other side of the valley is a 100m schlep across the creek bridge, and tends to be even quieter than the main slopes. Facing in the opposite direction... it's worth being aware of where the sun is and the time of day and all that. I think the grooming is good - you'll get cord every day if you want it and there's no fresh - but not over-zealous. If people can't find terrain they like here... they're doing it wrong.
These days I drive up and park right outside the hotel, but there are busses from Kamloops and the airport. I used to do day trips from Kamloops, it's only half an hour away.
This is looking back at "the main village". The pointy tower thing is just to the right and behind the Grand Hotel entrance, I think this is probably the line up for the first lift.
That'll be that main "Sunburst Express" lift. These shots were taken March 7 2022.
This is outside the back door of the Grand (on the left), looking at the main street in the morning.
The lifts are 50m behind the camera. It's all "fake alpine" architecture.
And here's that Morrisey return cat track.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Thanks everybody. Based on this, looks like I’m going to Canada.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Enjoy your visit to sun peaks! We have been going there for about 20yrs now!
We love the empty slopes, and the lovely locals.
Lift pass has gone up in price alot over the years but if you take your season pass from Sun Peaks to Whistler the day tickets at Whistler are half price. Worth knowing if your going to have a look and you buy a season pass.
Snow mobile tours worth doing, dog sledging, and a trip out on a piste basher. Lovely skating rink but the swimming pool closes in winter. If you're there when the wine festival is on look for the progressive wine tour...... ( you're given a start point were you pick up a glass and a map and a list of bc wineries to try you have about 2- 3 hrs to get through as many as you can via most bars and hotels in town) I am not sure if this still happens but we had some great evenings. Wine masters dinners ! 6 courses and 14 wines, ..... BC ice wines!
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We did the dog sledding, excellent...but we weren't covered on our insurance so we paid for am upgrade. I'm convinced they thought we were doing the Iditerod rather than a turn around the golf course!
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You know it makes sense.
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Regarding dog sledding. Before you do it watch the documentary film "sled dogs" and go see where the dogs they use live. Maybe things are better now, maybe there are some doing it in a more humane way. A lot of those dogs spend their lives chained up, and currently the BC law only requires a 1.83m long chain. I'm not really an "animal person" but it's pretty shocking.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Daughter has just bought a house in Kamloops, looking forward to skiing it this coming winter.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| boarder2020 wrote: |
| Regarding dog sledding. Before you do it watch the documentary film "sled dogs" and go see where the dogs they use live. Maybe things are better now, maybe there are some doing it in a more humane way. A lot of those dogs spend their lives chained up, and currently the BC law only requires a 1.83m long chain. I'm not really an "animal person" but it's pretty shocking. |
Very true, and how they are treated in their 'retirement' - we all remember Whistler 2010.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Took a trip up to Sun Peaks yesterday. All lifts and most runs open.
But sat at daughter’s house in Kamloops tonight, in the rain, with no snow…. It is very far from seasonal.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@dode, are you still there? Conditions seem to be improving - we're there in another five weeks so hoping the trend continues!
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@narbs, late this week a major storm is coming which should get everybody fully open by then.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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dode, interested to hear about the conditions as will be dropping in around Feb 26th - Although plenty of time yet for conditions to improve 
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My mate was there last week and conditions sounded as good as any in the region - not bad, considering it's been a low snow year. Then Thursday night we got dumped on, and it snowed all through Saturday evening. I drove down to Kamloops (not Sun Peaks) and there's a light dusting most of the way south; I'm sure Sun Peaks will have benefitted from the storm which just came through. The weather seems different too - the cloudy/ foggy thing we had the last two weeks is probably gone.
Here's a shot from Saturday in Blue River. This was about 40cm of fresh, the stuff you have to blow out of your face to breathe.
I'm sure it'll be fine.
I'll be back by late February, but really that's a world away in snow terms. It's been a low snow year, but it's all relative. I expect it'll be pretty normal by late Ferbruary. There's the odd layer in it, but nothing particularly worrying.
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| Regarding dog sledding. Before you do it watch the documentary film "sled dogs" and go see where the dogs they use live. Maybe things are better now, maybe there are some doing it in a more humane way. A lot of those dogs spend their lives chained up, and currently the BC law only requires a 1.83m long chain. I'm not really an "animal person" but it's pretty shocking. |
I'm friends with the lady who runs the dog sledding place in Big White, and I've spent many an hour with the 37 happy dogs there. Dogs are chained when they're not roaming free, a bit like sheep dogs in the UK (with which I've also a lot of experience). Cosmetically cables or leashes would look better, but chains actually work better, whatever Hollywood tells you. None of this is remotely a problem for them, they just can't all run around in a massive pack all the time. I've never, ever seen dogs as happy as these. A documentary on happy dogs possibly doesn't sell quite so well to the Netflix crowd. A dozen or so will be roaming what is a large compound playing around, whilst the rest are chained and resting. Every so often they'll be swapped around, so they all get to rest and play. It works great. And they're so massively keen to actually pull a sled, which also requires them to be harnessed, shock, horror.
One day there'll be a documentary about people who keep their dogs in solitary, and lock them in houses all day long. Or about documentary makers who apparently struggle with recording reality. I'll post some shots in another thread of only happy sled dogs, because that's all I saw.
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We left last Thursday. Never had any skiing time. Temps were dropping after we left and snow was forecast. We are heading back out at the end of March and will get a few days skiing then. As @phil_w, says, should be fine, just a slow start to the season.
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@phil_w, I'm sure there are some places that do it more humanely. But there are clear problems with sled dogs in BC. Like I said go watch the documentary, it's very well done. We can then discuss any criticisms you have rather than simply speculating it's a bias documentary.
Or we can just pretend things like this didn't happen
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistler_sled_dog_cull
Afaik legally there is still no restrictions on how long you can keep them chained. The documentary has some experts explaining why this is not good for the dogs.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| boarder2020 wrote: |
| @phil_w, I'm sure there are some places that do it more humanely. But there are clear problems with sled dogs in BC. Like I said go watch the documentary, it's very well done. We can then discuss any criticisms you have rather than simply speculating it's a bias documentary..... |
That's a straw man and it's not what was said. Of the 37 happy dogs I met in Big white, some are rescue dogs. No one's saying bad people don't exist. If you have a specific complaint based on your personal experience (not what you read on the internet), then write it down and put your name on it and we can sort it out. Otherwise it's just botty dribble.
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@phil_w, I'm not going to type out what is much better explained by experts in a well made documentary.
Honestly, it's not a topic that I ordinary would have cared to learn about. But I was in whistler when the documentary was premiered at the film festival so decided to check it out. They had a very interesting q&a afterwards.
The obvious example is whistler:
Following a downturn in business after the Olympics "execution-style killings" in which 56 dogs were wrestled dogs to the ground, stood on, and shot or had their throats slit. The dogs were then dumped into mass graves.
I don't think it's particularly nice or humane to have dogs tied to a short chain (I can't remember the legal length) for up to 24 hours per day. I don't think many people would want their own dogs living like this: https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0a/79/73/b9/some-of-the-friendly.jpg
Fwiw the documentary does show a humane dog sledding operation (I think at snowmass). They are not saying it should outright be banned or that it can't be done in a nice way. So perhaps the operation you saw is a particularly good one. Maybe laws and more strict now, it's been a while since the documentary came out and I've not particularly followed it.
But I don't think the advice of looking into some of the practices used in the sled dog industry and checking if the operation you are considering using is particularly bad.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Just spent the last 2 days at Sun Peaks. It was the last week of their season and lack of snow meant a lot of the lower runs were already closed. This wasn’t reflected in the lift pass prices. We only got 1.5 days of ski time tho as we were sharing grand daughter sitting time.
We stayed in an air bnb at Altitude, which was genuinely ski in/ski out (39 steps to the piste) not something we had experienced before in Canada, and very welcome. It also had a hot tub on tge balcony that the kids enjoyed.
The runs that were open were most enjoyable and I got to demo some stockli skis, which I had been looking fwd to. They performed well.
The area is well thought out with green runs acting as connectors to all the lifts, meaning that beginners and advanced slope users can get round the whole area and meet up pretty much anywhere.
We stopped at The Annex for lunch on day one, probably the worst food I’ve been given in any ski resort. Masa’s on day 2 was significantly better, but the wait time was significantly longer. There was only one food offering on the hill (at the top of the altitude lift) but we never went so can’t comment.
The slopes were ridiculously quiet though, skied on to first chair every time, all eagerly staffed by a young Aussie who was hell bent on on holding the chair back for you.
I’m quite glad it will be our Canadian destination for as long as the kids make Kamloops their home and I can’t wait to see it fully open with the trees struggling under the weight of fresh snow.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@dode, yes, Annex dining isn’t great! Although to be honest it was no worse than Sunshine/Louise/Norquay offerings we’ve had in previous years.
We ended up getting bites at either Vertical or Bolacco and first having those in the Annex so we could catch up with the kids at ski school lunch, and then in the cafes when it was made clear our presence wasn’t required 
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@narbs,
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You know it makes sense.
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We have eaten at 5 Forty cafe, and Bolacco, and vertical all good plus mountain high pizza buy a slice and sit outside.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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We’ve just come back after 10 days at the end of March. Really enjoyed it. Great empty slopes and nice feel to the village. Also not as expensive as I thought it would be. Probably go back next year.
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Poster: A snowHead
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@dode, we stayed at the grand but if we do go back next year I think I’d like to stay in a private house /Airb&b. Would you recommend the one you stayed in and if so, can you share the details?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I just use the grand & the cafe 50m from there, it's not a gourmet destination. In Kamloops the brownstone is really good. The pig is ok for beer & burgers.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Load up on the cinnamon buns and then you can skip lunch! (This is also true at Big White and Silver Star)
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I wonder why Canadian mountain top food is so awful. I spent a little time in Toronto recently and have rarely eaten better. 
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@Hurtle, its because at most resorts all eating places are run by the resort owners, with little to no incentive to do better
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That's what I've been told, seems likely.
It varies though, the restaurants in Big White village for example are run by the people... who run them.. and they do have a financial interest. It's just not a gourmet market though, you can eat well enough, but I think fancy just doesn't happen.
Hence the Brownstone in Kamloops sticks out. There have been other decent restaurants now and then around that location, but they don't usually last. It's like Scotland used to be.
The other "dynamic" is that many of these hills are hills not resorts - many people go home to eat, either to "the condo" or home, in the nearby town. Golden is pretty much like that, and Revelstoke too; they've got the real estate market kind of working, but the other infrastructure isn't quite there.
That said I can think of plenty of Alpine places where the food [and even coffee] is at best mediocre, so the same dynamic works in many places in Europe too, it seems.
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FAQ
