Sun Peaks 2008
Sun Peaks 2008
23, 24, 25 Jan – All one day for us. We got the shuttle to the airport (great service). The flight was fairly uneventful, easy check in. Helen had the oldie from hell in front of her until San Francisco. Seat rammed back before takeoff. No notice taken of flight attendants. The woman in the seat in front told her off – to no avail. From San Fran Geoff had her. The customs at San Francisco had a wake up since last year and were actually friendly. Through to an overnight hotel at Vancouver. Ok hotel. Out in the early morning, Jet lag ok. The pills work. Needs lots of fluids to help it work. Vancouver airport has re-done the little walkway out to the plane to Kamloops. Built a new terminal. Arrived at Kamloops and picked up the rental car. Did the shopping from our list – two trolleys of stuff – enough for 6 weeks. Drove up to Sun Peaks. We are staying at the Cooper’s ‘Home away from home’. Jill and Scott made us an offer that was difficult to refuse. It is a beautiful condo in a perfect location. Their son, Nick, was recently here with a group on male friends who were here snowboarding. They cleaned – but didn’t have time to do the sheets. Helen calls it ‘bench top clean’. She spent the next 4 days scrubbing, washing bathrooms and washing sheets. (Please, don’t get the wrong idea. Nick did a great job. Early twenty blokes snowboarding are a separate issue. The condo was clean. It is now cleaner.)
29 Jan – What a difference a day makes. We slept-in thinking it would be cold again and that we would go x-country. When we got up at 8:30am, it was snowing and it kept snowing until after 2pm. The type of x-country we do is terrible in fresh snow, but downhill is not. We hastily put the downhill gear on and headed out. Warmer – only minus 18 C. Two runs on the Sundance chair and then to our favourite run – Sting, groomed last night and the groomers choice. Our choice too. This run is close to perfect – no camber, just a constant fall line – category black. They groom it every second day or so. We try to be about first on it when they do. Today, we were late, but got three runs in before others made it bump up. Where were the people? We had about 10 cm of fresh snow today – the snow-spray sometimes getting above our knees. It felt as though we were here by ourselves. 5,800 m downhill.
A brief description of Sun Peaks. Central British Columbia in Canada. Sun Peaks resort was re-vitalised in the early 1990s by the British Columbian government as a tourist-attracting initiative. We have been here about 10 times over the last 12-14 years. We like the resort because of the friendly locals and staff, the great snow, the runs without camber and variety and grooming. (Grooming is a process of running a tractor like vehicle with smoothing blades over the snow to flatten it down and so make it easier for skiers. Sun Peaks grooms all green – beginner, most blue – intermediate, and many black runs – advanced, each day. We generally ski only the groomed runs each day and try to be first-ish on them.) Sun Peaks has 122 runs and 5 chairs lifts. We usually use the Sundance, Sunburst and Morrissey lifts. The runs on these lifts are 500-600 metres vertical and about 2.8 km long. There are seldom any queues and we almost never see anyone else on a run.
Over the years that we have come here, we have seen the resort grow from one hotel and a day lodge to now a respectable sized village.
The Coopers condo is extremely good. Very close to the lifts – almost ski in and out. We have not quite worked out the rubbish disposal. Sun Peaks Corporation expects that people will have a car and take their rubbish to the dump. We have been creeping around at night looking for unguarded rubbish bin. There is one bear-proof bin about 200 m away. That will do. Problem solved.
Sun Peaks trip 2008 - week 1
Tuesday, 29 January 2008