Adventure #238

Kiwis in Canada accompanied by a local - Never ending Rockies - Born to Run, our favourite!
Right: Big White's world-renowned snow ghosts - Image by Janine Fisher
ROAD TRIPPIN
KIWIS IN CANADA
What’s better than a road trip? A road
trip to go skiing. And what’s better than
a road trip to go skiing? A road trip with
around 12 inches of fresh snow!
As we flew across the Rockies from
Vancouver, the expansive mountain
range covered in snow was breathtaking,
it simply just goes on and on in every
direction and is as wide as it is deep. We
have great mountains in New Zealand
but nothing on this type of immense
scale.
We flew to Canada with Fiji Airways,
and after a quick stop off in the tropics,
we landed in Vancouver. A short internal
flight took us to Kelowna, where the fun
and the runs began. We had planned
to pick up a car from Kelowna drive
to Calgary, stopping off at Big White,
Silverstar, Revelstoke and Panorama ski
resorts along the way.
BIG WHITE
Big White Ski Resort is aptly named
and we couldn’t have asked for a better
reintroduction to skiing in Canada. It
is a picturesque place (as are all the
Canadian Ski fields) and it was just
made all the more perfect by the snow
falling steadily as we arrived early in the
evening.
The following day, due to an arctic blast
blowing through central BC, we were
greeted with a very cold -18 degrees.
The upside of the arctic blast was a
dumping of fresh snow and clear blue
skies. Big White and the resort area
covers a huge 7,355 acres. It is big, so
with only two days to spare we did our
best effort to cover as much as we could.
Snow hosts were available to give you
complimentary Mountain tours, but we
were lucky enough to have our nephew
working there so he took a couple of
days off to show us around.
With such a large terrain, the scenery
and snow conditions changed depending
on where we were skiing, from wide
open runs to tree clad glades and high
alpine slopes covered in alien-like mini
snow ghosts. We originally thought that
the trees had been stunted due to the
high altitude but later discovered it was
just the tops sticking out from under the
huge depths of snow.
Despite the fact that it was the weekend
and the sun was shining we felt like
we had the mountain to ourselves. Big
White, as the name suggests, is a big
mountain and has a lot to offer, not just
for the hardcore skier or snowboarder
but for families and beginners. The
mountain seems like a maze of runs and
connecting paths but they have been
cleverly devised so that the beginner can
take a green run, intermediate a blue and
the more extreme a black and in most
cases all meet up back at the same spot.
Big White Ski Resort prides itself on
being a family friendly village, but that
doesn’t mean that’s their only focus.
The restaurants and bars were alive
with people of all ages and stages of life
who regularly return to Big White year
after year. There were plenty of activities
outside of skiing; tubing, dogsledding
etc, but with only a few days to spare
we spent the weekend exploring the
expanse of the mountain.
8//WHERE ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS/#238