Whether in action movies or in magazines, the image of skiing and snowboarding is one of adrenaline and energy. Bombing down steep chutes with snow billowing over the shoulders. Arcing mach-speed giant slalom turns on immaculately groomed corduroy. Descending through snow-choked glades in waist deep powder. Flying off ten metre cliffs, and exploding in a heap below. What you don't see are images of any families, (unless they are comedy fare in Warren Miller movies), and there are good reasons for this. Like everything else in life, skiing with your family is not like skiing when you had mush for brains and a body immune to breaks and sprains.
Venture into the BC Interior, though, and the picture changes. Families are the visible majority at the four major ski resorts in the Thompson-Okanagan – Sun Peaks, Silver Star, Big White, and Apex Resort. Negotiating the Coquihalla or the Crowsnest Highway means shelling out for winter radials, but it's a trip that's well worth making, despite the inevitable sibling bickering that any road trip entails. The four to six hour drive means that long weekends, Pro-D days, and Christmas and March Break holidays are the most popular times to visit.
Though each resort has its own personality, the reasons families give for skiing there remain relatively uniform. "There's so much for the kids to do after skiing." "You can stay right on the hill, you don't need a car." "The snow is so much lighter and drier than we're used to on the Coast." "There's no attitude, there are no crowds. You can get away from everything up here."
Before I had kids, going to a "family oriented resort" like Big White was not high on my list. Taking a Christmas vacation to Big White six years ago turned both of my kids into skiers, with the help of the resorts' renowned Kid's Camp programs. You can get your lift ticket, gear rentals, and lessons all in one convenient place; an insider's tip - spring for the all-day lessons so that the kids can enjoy lunch inside the mini-cafeteria in the ski school.
Unique to Big White, the mountain's on-slope accommodation and services are terraced halfway up the mountain. Happy Valley is where you'll find the outdoor skating rink, the Mega Snow Coaster tubing park, two Magic Carpet lifts for first-timers, and the headquarters for both snowmobile and dogsled tours. For skiers and riders, though, the real action occurs a short gondola ride away in the Village Centre area. Here, you can ski down to the Ridge Rocket or Bullet Chairs and gain access to the main trails – and there are well over a hundred of them – that span over ten kilometres from one end to the other.
The beauty of Big White is that you don't need to be a double black diamond skier to enjoy open powder bowls, gladed tree runs, or other off-piste adventure skiing. Even expert terrain such as The Cliff strokes the ego with smooth, mogul-free descents and Over on the Gem Lake Express – six kilometres away from the village centre, stuck out on its very own, lies Sun Rype Bowl and Kalina's Rainbow – two of the most enjoyable runs in all of the Interior. Right under the Gem Lake chair, you can carve and rip around the frost encrusted snow ghosts, Big White's s signature feature. The snow ghosts are formed due to water droplets from low-lying clouds that roll in off nearby Okanagan Lake. As the season progresses, more and more snow and frost adhere to the trees to the point where they look like creatures from a B-Grade horror flick.
Visible from Big White (but almost two hours by road) and twenty minutes east of Vernon, Silver Star Mountain Resort offers an almost unbelievable number of family activites. Brewer's Pond freezes over in the winter, so break out the sticks and pucks for some old-fashioned pond shinny. The resort even hosts a three-on-three hockey tournament each February. Nordic skiers flock to the resort to take advantage of more than a hundred kilometres of cross country trails, including those found at adjacent Sovereign Lakes, which has even hosted a World Cup race. Silver Star has a resident naturalist, Rosanne Van Ee, who once worked as a naturalist for BC Parks. Roseanne leads a variety of snowshoe trips to explore the winter flora and fauna around the resort.
The Star Kids Centre is one of the few daycare/ski schools that is licensed to look after newborns. (Most resorts start daycare and lessons at about eighteen months of age). The guest services staff at Silver Star organize activities for every night of the week – some nights it's rock climbing on an artificial climbing wall, other nights it's Kids Craft Night, or Dinner and Movie night. Don't groan about this last one, parents – the Star Kids employees will baby-sit your kids for a couple of hours while you slip out for a quiet drink!
No attitude, and no crowds – that's what you'll discover in the ski resorts of the Thompson-Okanagan. |
