Pros and Cons: Sun Peaks

1. Mountain/town vibes
2nd largest resort in Canada behind Whistler. Village is much smaller though and doesn’t have any of the un-necessary stuff like Whistler does. Only a handful of hotels and most accom is self contained apartments. It’s super chilled and no place is more than 2km from the villiage (which is staff accom)

2. Crowds
Literally none. On the worst day of the season (Toonie day, where you can get a lift pass for $2 and a can of soup) the longest line was approx 3-5 minutes. However during peak season, Mid Burf (one of the chairlifts) can have a wait of up to an hour if everyone is getting on at the bottom. At that point, most people just walked to Crystal and didn’t come back.

3. Nightlife
There is 2 main places to go out. “Bottoms” and “The Club”. Bottoms is the main place. It’s privately owned, has a cool theme and everyone goes there. Tuesday night is Locals night where they had DJs and the place got crowded almost every week. They have 1 pool table (where you can play for free if you know how to dodge the machine) and have a bell above the bar where if you hit it, you buy a shot for everyone at the bar. If you’re touching the bar you get a free shot. Most of the time it was Fireball or Jager. They also have silent disco’s once a month on a Friday which is awesome fun. They have a party on the day after the last day of the season where all drinks are $3. They do this to get rid of any leftover alcohol.

The Club has their locals night on Thursdays. It’s less of an event and staff generally don’t bother after the first week. It’s not that great of a setup and drinks are way more expensive. It’s corp owned. However they do occasionally have live acts and a better dance floor. The Red and White Party is held there every year which is a fund raiser for ski patrol. Everyone wears red and white and goes mental.

4.Working
I was a Lifty and loved it. It can get boring at times and some of the managers were very biased on things (they didn’t really like the lifties on fixed grip lifts cause they didn’t think we kept things in order. Even though we were actually bumping lifts…)
Overall though, you got a few ride breaks every day and the ride down at the end of the day was a sea of blue jackets going down a long ass green run. Best part of the day by far.

5. Finding rent
I lived in Staff Accom so it wasn’t hard at all. If you wanted to rent in a house, get there early and start looking. Some people got stuck in the hostel which costs a bomb and you need to share rooms. Come January there is always some openings from all the people who get home sick or run out of money and decide to go home.

6. Staff housing
Was more than ample. There is 2 types. LSL and Whispering Pines. LSL is 4 bedroom apartments split into Male and Female apartments (so 12 apartments total, 3 for the Delta hotel staff, 3 Female and 6 Male). Each person gets their own room with a single bed, a chest of drawers and a hanging rail. The houses are a long room with kitchen / lounge and then there is a bathroom which has walk into 2 sinks, then a separate bath/shower and a separate toilet. Whispering Pines is the original Staff accom and is cheaper. However it’s 2 beds to a room, 1 kitchenette and a bathroom. (no oven). The top floor of Whispering Pines is couples territory, which has 2x double rooms and a kitchenette / loungeroom.

7. Making friends
I was the guy who knew everyone. I was there early and made a ton of friends. Rarely rode alone and always showed up at or hosted parties in Staff Accom. Make an effort to get to know people and you’ll love living at the mountain. The people who left the resort were often introverts who I didn’t even know some we met after they had booked their flights out and then they got involved and regretted their decisions.

8. Locals
The locals were awesome. 1 guy would come around to the lifties and bring lollies all the time. On Christmas, we got shortbread cookies and toblerones from another local and pre season the lady that owned the coffee shop took me to town so I could shop. It’s all about being nice and supporting the locals rather than being an ass and the locals hating you.

9. Expense of living
Staff accom was 475 per month. Beer is $35 a case / $5-7 at bottoms. Cheese is like $12 a block. (I like cheese…) It’s do-able on the wage you get if you don’t go crazy. I ended up using a bit of my savings but I also drank like 2 cases of beer a week and would buy coffee and lunch a lot hahahaha.

10. Activities/sightseeing
There is a few, snowmobiles, dog sleds, first tracks, tube park (free for staff) , bungie tramp (more for kids though), x country skiing.

11. Pros/cons of Sun Peaks
Pros:
- Large mountain, you won’t get bored. 3 very unique peaks.
- On hill staff accom at a good price
- Walkable distance to anywhere on the mountain. (2km from staff to the pub but someone generally has a car and everyone shares the dessy drives)
- Cheaper than Whistler for housing if you don’t want to live in staffies
- Interior “Champaign” powder (when it falls)
- Small enough that you know a good portion of staff
- Large enough that you can make more than 1 group of friends.
- Mountain High Pizza. It’s delicious!

Cons:
- Still a large mountain, everything tracks out easily. When we went to Manning Park, we rode till 2pm, still finding fresh tracks. Everything is chopped by 9:30 at SP.
- The Burf Chair. 22 minutes from bottom to top, which is the only lift that gives access to the best black terrain.
- Not as steep as a lot of mountains. The blacks aren’t really that hard and the few double blacks are in terrible positions and you don’t even care for them.
- Minimal off piste and easy to get lost. We had more people than a lot of resorts who ventured out of bounds and ended up stranded requiring helicopters to help them out. One of my mates had to leave his skis out there cause he took a wrong turn.
- Not as regular snow as most other mountains. On a good year it’s epic. On a bad year you can go a month without a dump (like we did) and end up on sheets of ice.
- Grooming, grooming everywhere. When we finally got some snow, the groomers would just run right over it on 75% of the runs and nobody would get to play in the freshies. We couldn’t even get a day on some of the runs which were still in good nick. If you’re a skiier who likes fast groomers, this is the mountain for you!