Mud’s Sun Peaks 2015-16 Family Trip Report
Why We Chose Sun Peaks
We’re a family of four and are keen skiers (wife & kids) and snowboarder (me). The kids are 8 and 11. We joined a lodge at Hotham about 3 years ago and have been getting about 30 riding days per season for the past couple of years. Everyone is riding/skiing at a reasonable level and we’d had our eyes on an overseas trip for a year or two. We’d had been planning to do it maybe at the end of 2016, however after a trip to the Snow Travel Expo back in April or May 2015 we had a rush of blood and decided to go for the northern 2015/16 season. We’d originally been keen on a Japan trip but after some discussion on this forum and with other people we thought it would be good to look at other options, in particular the US or Canada. The value of the AUD vs USD pretty much ruled out the US even though some of the resorts were pitching attractive deals at the expo to counter it. Looking to Canada, we ruled out Whistler early on, based mostly on cost and variable quality snow, especially as we would be travelling early in the season. This left us looking at Sun Peaks, Silver Star and Big White. We removed Big White based on feedback about it being socked in (foggy) quite often and maybe not so steep. Silver Star looked good but was smaller and more expensive than Sun Peaks. Sun Peaks seemed to have everything we were looking for; large snow area, good snow quality, reliable cover, family friendly both in attitude and design (the runs nearly all funnel back to the village area), good price and ski-in/out accommodation. A lot of other Aussies from ski.com.au and the spin-off Sun Peaks Free Forum seem to have decided the same thing and there is a large contingent that go there each year. We briefly looked at travelling around a bit but that would have added to the cost and reduced the duration of the trip, besides, we wanted to relax and not stress about moving around.
Sun Peaks is the second largest snow resort in Canada after Whistler Blackcomb. It has 4,270 rideable acres (by way of comparison, Hotham has 790 acres) with 135 runs with 882m of vert.
Travel
We ended up with the following flights:
- Melbourne-Sydney Qantas
- Sydney-Vancouver Air Canada
- Vancouver-Kamloops Air Canada (propeller plane)
We got a significantly cheaper deal by pulling the kids out of school a few days early and flying on 4th December, with return on 24th January, so a trip of about 7 and a half weeks. We also got a good deal on the accommodation - the hotel is more expensive in the busy weeks, but we got a discount as we also had a long stay through the quiet period. We also got a discount for staying more than 30 nights, after which there is no tax to be paid. On top of that, the hotel threw in an extra free night to allow for our late check-out on the final day.
The trip itself was what you’d expect from long-haul economy, but went about smoothly considering it included a 14 hour (16 on return) leg. Pro tip: when travelling with kids, get the aisle seat not the window; they wee a lot. I was a bit stressed about the change-over at Sydney airport as domestic and international are in different terminals. There is a Qantas shuttle bus but the travel agent told us we wouldn’t be able to use it due to our Air Canada tickets. That turned out to be false and made the transfer a lot easier (and cheaper). Also, our bags were checked through from Melbourne to Van so we didn’t have to manage those. We kept our checked baggage within Air Canada limits, but took a small gamble on one of our carry-on bags (a few cm too fat). That turned out not to be any issue in either direction. AC allows 1 x 23 kg bag, 1 carry-on and one “personal item” per passenger. The personal item can be a small bag. The 23kg bag can be swapped for a ski bag, and I sourced a large Dakine High Roller coffin bag from BW to carry over my board, wife’s skis and son’s skis. We decided to buy my daughter a new pair over there, and also managed to fit that into the bag on the way back. The bag was pretty maxxed-out for weight on the return leg. There seemed to be some confusion about the AC “boot bag rule”; we had thought it was one boot bag per pair of skis/board but one of the AC check-in people said it was one per ski bag. Qantas didn’t seem to care too much (in a good way).
Accommodation
After looking at some condos (townhouses), we eventually decided to go with a hotel; Hearthstone. The condos offered a bit more space but as most were a bit out of the village they seemed to suit people with cars better. Hearthstone was apparently a Radisson at one time, I guess back in the 80s. It was in pretty original condition, I would say maybe 3 star quality. The room we got was one of their larger ones and had a queen bed, bunk and sofa-bed - we didn’t want the hassle of having to make up a sofa bed each day. The whole room was open plan except for the bathroom. It had a kitchenette with decent sized fridge and small dishwasher. Our room was facing the road as opposed to the village, but also took in views of Mt Morrisey. While this had a slightly less charming view, it was probably quieter during the festive nights, however you do cop the road-clearing machine in the early morning. It also had a ski storage room with lock-up racks, a small gym, two hot-tubs a car-park and a coin-op laundry. There was no drying room, however we were able to dry out any wet boots overnight in front of the gas heater or by turning the bathroom into a virtual drying room by closing all the doors and cranking the heating up. The staff there were really nice and very helpful. When we finally left they gave the kids a Hearthstone teddy-bear each which was awesome.
Village
The village area is at around 1250m and has permanent snow cover. It is designed to imitate a European village and does a surprisingly good job of it. There are no cars on the main avenue and it is a very pleasant walk on the snow. It can be ridden through from the top however I hardly saw anyone do that. Access to all of the key lifts is very easy from any building in the central village area, even with small children in tow. The village is a nice size, with maybe a dozen shops and a similar number of restaurants.
Many of the shops are “corp” (owned by the mountain) and season pass holders can get a 10% discount right off the bat. The most popular ski/board shop would be Jardine’s, located at the bottom of Hearthstone. It was a non-corp shop and we got some really good service there, such as a machine wax for our 3 pairs of skis and one board for CAD$20. We ended up spending quite a bit there including skis, helmet, goggles and various bits and pieces. Other shops included more ski shops, a boarding shop (fairly Burton and Anon heavy), an excellent chocolate shop, a candy shop, bottle shop, small supermarket, big name gear stores (Helly Hansen, North Face), official merchandise and an art gallery. Restaurants covered most cuisines and we found they offered good quality at a reasonable price (for a resort). The pizza and burger places were excellent. There’s not a great deal of nightlife and we didn’t spend much time exploring the 2 or 3 bars.
Aussies
There were a lot of Aussies there, both as staff and tourists. Of the tourist crew we met, we found a lot were from non-snow states such as Qld and WA. I guess it’s not surprising that they would choose to spend similar money to get better conditions than in Vic or NSW. Many of the tourists knew each other from the Sun Peaks Free Forum which was started by an ex-pat Aussie who lives in Sun Peaks, “MainStreet”. It was an impressive demonstration of the power of social media to see such a large group come together as a community.
MainStreet and his Canadian partner, DrD really anchored the Aussie community. They hosted and provided Christmas breakfast at their place for all of us and organised Christmas dinner at one of the restaurants. They welcomed newcomers with dinner at their home and showed them around the mountain. They also took Aussie staff under their wing and frequently host them for dinner. They were extremely generous to us and we are very grateful for it.
Cars
We decided to do without a car and it worked out fine for us. The only time we really needed car transport was to get down to Kamloops for shopping (mainly groceries). On those occasions we were either able to bum a lift with MainStreet or another Aussie, or use the Sun Peaks Facebook group to hitch a lift with staff doing a Kamloops run. This sometimes led to rides with colourful characters, including one guy who got into a slightly aggro bird-flipping session with some rednecks in pick-ups on the highway.
The Mountain
Sun Peaks has three ridable mountains within the resort boundary: Mt. Tod, Sundance and Mt. Morrisey. Tod is the original mountain and is the highest, has the most lifts and runs. Sundance, easily reached from Tod, is lower and features mainly blue and green runs and several terrain parks. Morrisey is across the road and features mainly blues but also some harder blacks. Morrisey’s runs tend to be narrower and there has been less tree clearing which leads to some really pleasant riding. The Sundance and Sunburst (Mt. Tod) lifts converge outside the day lodge in the village with Morrisey a short walk across the road and a covered footbridge, then a Poma and short cat-track ride.
Mount Tod has the Sunburst or “bubble” detachable high-speed quad chair with perspex cover (hence “bubble”) from the village to mid-mountain. Riders wanting to go up to the alpine elevations can take a short ride down to the Crystal chair (3 person fixed chair) then up to near the top of Mt Tod. This seems to be the preferred way to get to the top. The other option is the Burfield chair - the original Mt Tod chair. Its loading point is down the road to the west of the village and can be ridden to from mid-mountain. It seems like a rite of passage to accidentally end up at this chair, which takes a full 22 minutes to get to the top. We were told that in the olden days, passengers were given a horse blanket to throw over themselves to keep warm. There is a mid-mountain load point that can get a bit busy, mostly with locals hunting pow away from the more popular areas. The unloading point is at 2080m, a little above and west of the bubble unload. There is riding down to the south and east towards the village, to the west along Juniper Ridge and off the back at West Bowl (t-bar). There is also access to the Gil’s sidecountry area.
Sundance would seem like it might be a quiet area with virtually all blues and greens, however it was usually the busiest chair. It was also a 4 person high-speed detachable quad with load at the village and unload at 1730m. It had several terrain parks under the lift: a small-medium park with boxes and rails and medium kickers, then further down to a series of large kickers, then another park with harder rails and XL kickers. At the bottom was the easy park with a few small boxes, rails and kickers.
Morrisey was a very pretty, heavily treed area and was usually the quietest of the three mountains. It was a good place to find powder when other areas were being schralped out quickly. The harder black area offered some pretty steep and challenging terrain, but nothing life-threatening (who wants that anyway?).
It is worth mentioning that the resort seems to be exceptionally well laid-out. The ability to easily get from one part of the mountain to another was amazing. There were very few flat/uphill traverses for the boarders and most of the runs funnelled back to the village, in fact the only exceptions were the Burfield area and some of the steeper blacks in the newly developed “washing machine” area of Morrisey.
When we arrived in early December the mountain was very quiet. It stayed quiet until near Christmas, with the busiest time being the Christmas-New Year week. Even then, we found queues at the main lifts were only 3-4 minutes max. There was no aggro or jostling in queues as there was simply no need; the lifts had large capacity and the queues moved fast. Once up on the mountain it still felt very uncrowded as the large terrain swallowed the crowds easily. There was one very busy day called “Toonie Day”. A Toonie is a Canadian $2 coin, and on Toonie Day the locals from Kamloops all come up and pay $2 and a non-perishable food donation to charity for a lift ticket. It was very busy that day, but even then you could still get on the main lifts in under 5 minutes.
We were lucky to visit in a good snow year. The cover was very good when we arrived on 4th December and we had continuous falls and cold temps through the month. Sun Peaks is probably not the place to go if you’re looking for freakish 1m dumps, but it does have consistent smaller falls with excellent snow quality. The biggest fall we had there was 30cm. We had some warmer weather in January - more like Aus conditions. I think there was only one day where we had some melt-freeze and only at the lowest elevations. The snow was always very good up at the alpine level, although you couldn’t always ride up there due to fog. We had almost no wind the entire time we were there. I’m not sure if that’s usual but it seemed amazing to us.
A quick tour around the resort, known as “around the world”.
Gil’s
The Gil’s sidecountry area has been ridable for years, however this was the first year it was declared inside the resort boundary. The map shows the resort boundary around the outside of Gil’s, but then has an undefined “snow safety boundary” between the main resort and Gil’s. Not sure how that would wash if you injured yourself out there and then tried to claim travel insurance. It is patrolled daily but last patrol finishes at 2:00pm. There are several parts to it, but the main part is a steepish face off the side of a ridge. It involves a 10-15 minute hike/skate out there, and a cat track back. It is quite steep and can be a bit off-putting for first-timers. I was taken out there by a couple of very good skiers, and later took my wife and kids out there. It’s bit of work for a short run, but for me it was a small taste of backcountry riding and I loved it - away from the crowds, beautiful scenery, fresh tracks in great snow.
The Skier:Snowboarder Ratio
I’m not sure what the boarder:skier ratio is in Aus, but it feels like it’s maybe 40:60 or better. It was definitely less at Sun Peaks, maybe 30:70 or less. This did work in my favour as most of the lessons I took turned into privates as nobody else turned up (and they don’t shorten the lesson in this case like they do back home). I tried to convince some of the other Aussies to try boarding but most of them were very unreceptive. Maybe that’s to be expected as they were mostly an older crowd.
Lessons
We all took lessons at the resort snowsports school. Most of mine turned into privates when nobody else turned up, which was great for my progression. My wife was pretty happy with most of her lessons and her skiing definitely progressed well. It is also nice that upper level adult lessons are capped at 3-4 people per class. The instructors I had were all very good and I really enjoyed the time I spent in lessons.
I was slightly less happy with the kids’ lessons. It worked out well at the start when there were few kids in the class, however once we got into January the classes got larger and I didn’t feel like they were progressing at all. I asked one of the instructors what they needed to to improve and he said “They’re skiing really well, just keep giving them more time on the snow.” I know neither of them have perfect technique, especially the younger one, so I was a bit disappointed in that feedback. The lunch provided to the kids wasn’t great either, mainly due to the main part of the meal being a sandwich which none of the kids (not just mine) seemed to like. If you were visiting with kids who were already solid skiers, I probably wouldn’t bother with ski school, at least in the busier times. I actually think Hotham ski school is better than Sun Peaks for our kids, as they offer an additional level (L6 - workshop) which is not for pretenders and out of which you see real progression. Hotham also offers a hot meal for lunch which the kids love. I was also slightly disappointed that the SP ski school didn’t have other programs outside of regular lessons, such as race squad or freestyle.
Kids Boarding
I was keen to get the kids boarding, and they were super keen to try it, too. In fact my wife was even going to give it a go, however she fell on a boardwalk and bruised her tailbone and wasn’t overly willing fall on it again. We hired a couple of boards packages from Jardines that came with excellent little Salomon boa boots. I adjusted the bindings so they were +12/-12, rather than +12/0 they came with. An instructor told me they keep telling the shops to set them at +12/-12 but the shops are stuck in 1990 or something and keep putting the back foot at 0. They were booked for half-day lesson on the first day, but couldn’t wait to start and were out the door like missiles for a practice before the lesson. The lesson was great and they had a really good young Canadian instructor. We kept going after lunch on the easy slopes and they were turning pretty well for first-day beginners. I found the constant falling did take the edge of the enthusiasm, especially for the younger one, however they kept going. We couldn’t get them into a lesson the next day due to all the instructors being booked out by school groups, so I took over instructing and worked pretty intensively with them. We made an arrangement with a friend who was also an instructor on the third day and they got to ride with her for the morning (and managed to con her into a burger lunch). That really helped their riding and they enjoyed it hugely. On the fourth day I took them out and we did a couple of the easier blue runs, without much falling. After that we had some friends from Aus turn up with their kids who are gun skiers, so we put out little dudes back on skis to keep up with their friends. I didn’t get a chance to get them back on boards, but I hope to do so back in Aus this coming season.
Phones
Communication on the mountain is an issue, or at least there are several approaches to it. Most of the regular Aussie crew use walkie-talkies and sit on a particular channel. We elected to use our mobile phones with prepaid SIMs from Rogers which is more or less the local version of Telstra. We bought a $30/month prepaid plan with pretty much unlimited voice and text but zero data. This worked well until it came time to recharge. The Rogers website won’t accept anything other than a Canadian credit card. The only way around it would have been a trip to town to buy a voucher or over the counter at a Rogers shop. Pretty frustrating so we didn’t bother and just went without phones for a few weeks. The walkie-talkie path might be an option next time around, although I hate carrying bulky stuff.
Skier Injuries
We had a few injuries in the extended Aussie group, including one snapped ACL. My wife also sprained her ankle and my daughter jammed up her leg a bit on a jump and they had a few days off each. My only injuries in 50 days of riding were a neck strain (failed ollie at speed), and slight concussion (caught an edge riding switch on a firm cat track), both of which were gone the next day. One of the experienced skiers reckons the rise of fat skis is putting additional force on the skiers’ legs and causing problems. He won’t ride fats except in genuine powder - maybe some of the skiers on fats in Aus should take note.
Other Activities
While we didn’t travel around much while we were at Sun Peaks, we did fit in a few extra activities.
Dog Sledding Firstly, we found a good early-season deal on dog sledding. The four of us went in two sleds around a trail that took about 40 minutes to complete. The kids absolutely loved it and couldn’t stop talking about it all day. I would highly recommend it to families. The people who ran it were really nice, too.
Hockey We also had a trip down to Kamloops with a group of 30 or so Aussies to see the Kamloops Blazers ice hockey team play the Victoria Royals. This is a university level league but the standard is good. We were blown away by the quality of the small stadium and also the game itself. Another worthwhile activity if you get the chance.
Bungee and Tubing We also bought resort season passes for bungee trampoline and tubing. The kids enjoyed both. The tubing was best on the rare occasions when we got a bit of melt-freeze at the village level, as the icy track led to some wild rides.
Christmas MainStreet and DrD held Christmas morning at their home, with a big decorated tree outside. Santa delivered presents overnight and one of the older kids handed them out to eager hands on a freezing morning. A few “extras” found their way in thanks to MainStreet/DrD and another regular family that own a property at SP. The hosts provided a delicious cooked breakfast of cinnamon scrolls (best I’ve ever had), savoury muffins and.. I can’t remember the rest as I couldn’t go past the scrolls! The kids all played together and there was a great atmosphere. Going for a ride on Christmas day in the fresh snow was a great treat. A few days earlier the village put on an event for families with carol singing, free hot chocolate and maple taffy poured hot into snow and rolled on a stick. Everyone came out and the place really came alive and looked a treat with Christmas lights everywhere.
Costs
A brief summary of costs for the four of us:
Airfares (Melb-Kamloops return incl. transfer to Sun Peaks) AU$6,199
Accommodation (51 nights) AU$6,976
Season Passes not including tubing/bungee add-ons AU$2,457
A typical sit-down dinner for a family of 4 would be around $100 including tips. We ate out once or twice a week. Top-quality pizza was about $40 for an extra-large which was more than we could eat in one sitting.
Kamloops
The local town is about 45-60 minutes from the resort on a pretty good road and highway. It has a population around 100,000 and has a reasonably large university. It is spread out on a big hill above a river with the old part of town lower down. As it was quite spread out, having a car to get around was pretty much a must. Interestingly, the town is located in what is technically a desert and apparently the summer temps are quite hot.
Climate
We found December quite cold, with temperatures at the top going as low as -20C. That can be hard to take and while we came prepared with light puffer jackets as cold weather mid-layers, we had some challenges with our extremities. Balaclavas and good gloves are essential, and we used chemical warmers in our boots and/or gloves on the coldest days. We bought “boot gloves” for the little one, which are neoprene covers that go over the top of a ski boot and keep them warmer and dryer. We also upgraded the kids’ and wife’s gloves to Hestra Helis which have removable liners - great for drying out, and which are hard to find back in Aus. I bought some North Face Montana mitts which were great, except that the faux leather palms wore through to the fabric underneath due to operating my bindings. I returned them but I will miss them as they were otherwise excellent gloves. We found we didn’t need especially waterproof gear as the snow was dry, however it did tend to get into the kids’ boots.
January was warmer with a little less snow, however it made the conditions a bit less extreme and we had more bluebird days. We also had the occasional temperature inversion where the temps were warmer at alpine levels than the village.
Family Riding Improvement
I think we all improved our riding or skiing, the kids probably less than the adults because they were already better skiers. My general riding/carving improved a bit and as a result of constantly chasing my kids through the trees, my tree riding also improved. My freestyle is still definitely lacking and I want to work on that a lot more in future as I believe it is an essential part of snowboarding. I did spend a lesson and the rest of the day riding switch, which was pretty tough. My switch is still bad, but better than it was. I took a lesson on a powder day and dragged the instructor up to some untouched powder on West Bowl. I think he thought he had won the lottery!
Gear Reviews
GoPro 4 Black
I took a GoPro 4 Black which I had picked over others in the market due to its superior image quality. I shot nearly the whole time in 4K 30 fps and it came out razor sharp. I was able to extract still frames from the video stream and use them as photos, even with cropping. It was also great for shooting footage of people at a distance as I could crop it down to 25% and still have a decently sharp image at 1080p. I also had a play with 720p 240fps super slow-mo which came out great. On the downside, this is an expensive little unit - overpriced in my opinion. The wireless connectivity is still a bit disappointing and also battery-sapping, although they have improved it a bit through use of Bluetooth combined with WiFi. Speaking of batteries, I took 3 with me and frequently used 2 or 3 per day. Shooting at 4K in very cold conditions can drain the battery in less than an hour. I invested in a dual-battery USB charger for the trip. I had been a bit dubious about its cost, but that little charger turned out to be pretty much essential to keep me with enough charged batteries to get through a day and I would highly recommend it. I was also rocking a GoPro Smart Remote, which I mounted on my forearm using the supplied velcro strap. This worked really well as I was always able to see and change settings without having to take the cam off my head. It also allowed me to put the cam on the kids’ helmets and still be able to control it from a distance. The only downside was the velcro strap completely wearing out.
Yes Greats 154 Snowboard
I bought a 2016 Yes Greats 154 with Now Select bindings from BoardWorld last year. I didn’t ride it very much at Hotham last season due to poor snow cover, but it was the only board I took to Sun Peaks. This is the best board I have ever ridden, by far. Each time I pulled it out of the rack I got a little rush at how light it was. I spent most of my time just riding around the groomers, mostly with skiers and a fair bit in trees with my kids. The board carves like a demon and has plenty of camber pop out of turns. I sometimes found there was a slight twitch coming out of a heelside turn at speed, but that’s probably more me than the board. The base must be made of industrial diamonds or something, because it had barely a mark on it after 50 straight days of riding, including a lot of bush-bashing in the trees. The base is also very fast, and I was frequently leaving other riders behind on the flat sections. I saw plenty of Yes boards at Sun Peaks - actually a surprising number - but no other Greats. I love this board, and I really hope my marriage is strong enough when I buy the 2017 model that I must have because it has a pig on it. The Now bindings seem good, but I’m not sure I’m a good enough rider to really tell the difference. If I had a standard set of bindings with me I could maybe have swapped them out to see. The straps are pretty good, but I wish it had high-back rotation adjustment.
Google Nexus 6P Smartphone
I took a Google Nexus 6P phone with me. Great phone - latest Android, fast, great camera, good speaker. The camera has 4K video and burst mode.
Smith I/O Goggles
I took some goggles (Dragon Rogue) with a general purpose lens - smoky yellow and some high-vis (sunny) goggles. I probably could have skipped the sunny pair as the general purpose gogs did fine in the sun. I did find I needed some low-light gogs, and ended up shelling out for some Smith I/Os which for some reason are much cheaper there than in Aus. The low light lenses do make a big difference and I’m happy with them.
Travel Tips
A few quick travel tips:
clothes line - take one or two travel clothes lines. Perfect for providing some extra hanging space for wet things and laundry.
power - we took two US power adaptors and an Aussie powerboard, then just brought our Aussie device power supplies (phones, iPads, Macbook). Worked out perfectly.
Chromecast - I usually take our old Macbook and a portable hard disk loaded with movies and connect it to the room’s TV set with a HDMI to Display Port cable. Unfortunately my old Macbook doesn’t do sound over its Display Port, so I have to pack an extra audio cable. Also, it means you have locate the Mac right next to the TV which limits its use. This time, I took a travel router (size of a USB stick) and our Chromecast from home. I ran Plex media server on the Macbook and displayed it either on the various iPads or the TV via Chromecast. It worked ok most of the time, however when the WiFi got congested during the busy period it didn’t work so well. Next time I hope to have 802.11ac compatible Mac, router and Chromecast to avoid that congestion.
losing stuff - it’s really worth thinking about what you’re going to do if you lose something important. Are you prepared if you lose travel doco, passport, credit cards or mobile phones? Do you have immediate access to information that would help you replace it or locate it if you lost it? I lost my phone and did not have the IMEI or serial number with me which would have helped with an immediate travel insurance claim. Also, the phone was off so I couldn’t use the Android Device Manager to locate it.
How does it Compare to Aus
It was interesting for me to ski at the second largest resort in Canada and compare it to Hotham back in Aus. It has something like 8 times the rideable area, yet it didn’t feel daunting or hard to navigate. The runs were certainly much longer and usually very wide which allowed them to feel uncrowded pretty much all of the time. The snow quality and cover was definitely better and the scenery was amazing. It is a great resort, however I feel Hotham stacks up surprisingly well apart from the snow cover/quality aspect. It isn’t as good, but it’s not so far behind as to be out of the picture. The Hotham ski school is arguably better, and while the village isn’t as big, it offers similar shopping and dining. I think Hotham could take a good long look at the fantastic park facilities at SP as these were very popular.
Tipping
I wasn’t too sure what to expect with tipping. We’d had some friends warn us we had to tip every man and his dog, but it turned out not to be too bad. There was no need to tip for counter service. Tipping at sit-down meals was expected and was fine. We usually tipped 20% if the service was good (and it always was). We also tipped the instructors where most people didn’t seem to bother. They only make about $12 per hour, so giving them a tip really made their day. We also tipped the cleaners at Hearthstone as they also get paid chicken feed. What was a little annoying was sales tax. Unlike Aus, tax is not included on the price tag of goods in shops (food excluded I think), so you’d go to the counter and get slugged sales tax made up of GST plus a provincial tax. I think this added up to around 15%. This seemed a little unnecessary and annoying.
Highlights
- Trees. My kids and in particular the little one, discovered tree skiing early on in lessons. From that moment on, it was hard to get him to want to ski anywhere else. This led to some rapid learning on my part as I was sent to chaperone him. He was able to squeeze through some amazingly small gaps and I found it a real challenge to balance navigation, riding uneven terrain, short turns and controlling speed on narrow paths. And not hitting trees, falling down tree wells or disturbing hibernating bears.
- Community
Maybe the biggest strength of Sun Peaks is the community. This starts with the ever-changing Aussie group and extends to the mountain and shop staff. We definitely never felt isolated and it made for a much better experience for us and the kids.
A short(ish) video of the experience.
Thanks, Azz. I’m still adding to it, so check back in a week or two. No need for prizes, I like doing this as a record of my trip.