Sun Peaks - Staff visit by Craig Rohloff

The first thing you ask yourself when standing at the base of Sun Peaks, or at least the first thing I asked, is ‘where shall I ski?’ The resort is made up of three distinct mountain faces, all offering a variety of runs, which surround the small and extremely pleasant village. With the clever way it is all laid out the simple answer is to ski them all.

So that’s exactly what I set out to do and I headed up the Sundance Express chair, which services a range of long beginner and intermediate cruisers, as well as the terrain park and half pipe. As is often the case at Sun Peaks the snow was dry and powdery. Even though in early December, the snow quality and coverage was excellent.

From here I took the very long Mt Morrisey Connector, which skirts around the main village. Here there are further excellent cruisers through the trees but also some great glade runs, along with a few short but steep black and double black runs.

From the top of Mt Morrisey there is a choice of runs that feed back to the village or you can take, as I did, the Back In Time run down the valley to the Burfield chair. This takes you to the top of Mt Tod, the third and largest of the mountains and where your choice of skiing really opens up. For beginners there is the long and very scenic 5 Mile run which winds its way for (you guessed it) 5 miles back to the village. As the top section is above the tree line, intermediates and the more advanced have an endless choice of open bowls and ridge lines, from the mildly steep to the hair rising! I choose the Crystal Bowl, gave some great lines and even found some areas of fresh powder – very impressive several days after the last snowfall.

As the day grew to an end I cruised down the mountain completing the loop back to the village and after a quick (actually quite long) relax in the hot tub at the Cahilty Lodge it was time for some dinner. Luckily I had been invited out to the restaurant at the Delta Hotel. The food was excellent and made all the more enjoyable due to our very cosy setting, beside the well stoked fire. Afterwards I headed Massa’s Bar and Grill which despite being early season and fairly quiet had a good atmosphere. After a packed day on the slopes, you certainly can’t go wrong, relaxing with a beer whilst watching the hockey.