Skiers and snowboarders will find lots of new additions to the slopes for the 2024/25 winter season, including a large amount of new skiable terrain thanks to the West Bowl Express chairlift, snowmaking, infrastructure and terrain improvements and shuttle service advancements.
The Powder Ventures Ski and Snowboard Cross Course
To get the cross course operational, the hill just needs a few centimetres of snow, chief marketing officer for Sun Peaks Resort LLP (SPR) Aaron Macdonald said.
This winter, the new dirt-based cross course is scheduled to host a BC snowboard NorAm followed by a snowboard cross camp in January.
“We have groups that are inquiring and booking,” director of communications for SPR Christina Antoniak said. “The opportunity that we knew would be there from an event’s perspective is certainly already at the doorstep for this winter.”
To meet requirements for International Ski and Snowboard Federation races, SPR installed timing cables in the snow cross course.
When the course is able to open, dependent on weather and operations, there will be an official opening event to welcome the facility.
While the course was being constructed, some work was done on jumps on the terrain park as well.
“They just increased the size of the jumps a little bit more the terrain above it,” Macdonald said, adding that with extra snow, they’ll be seeing how much more they can build on that.
Snowmaking improvements
The 2024/25 winter season is the start of a six-year plan for enhancements on SPR’s snowmaking program.
“The intention is to increase our fleet of snow guns, therefore our snowmaking capabilities, with more efficient models and ones that are automated in ways that our guns have not been,” Antoniak said.
Quite an investment, snow making is something not every resort has.
For early season reliability and providing the opportunity to open the race centre and training parks early, Antoniak said snowmaking is pretty critical to their business.
SPR added five new snow guns to the fleet this year, for a total of 36. These include a mix of fixed, mounted stick guns and mobile fan guns.
“This year, what we’ve been able to put in are more snow guns within the Valley area,” she said, explaining that more capacity at the lower elevation is useful as that’s where the lack of snow will be seen.
Another significant improvement lies in the automotive abilities of new guns.
With weather stations on the snow guns, they’re programmed to read temperature and humidity, turning on and off automatically when the reader indicates it’s necessary.
Not all the snow guns have been programmed this way, but a significant enough amount that it will save ample time and energy for resort employees.
A highlight of the snowmaking efforts this year is one fixed mount gun with a large swinging arm at the base of OSV and 5 Mile.
“It can go 30 or 40 feet up in the air and swivel 360 degrees,” Antoniak said, making it a very prominent addition to the hill that guests will certainly take notice of.
Adding more infrastructure
“We’ve got an improvement to the elevation lift that we’re pretty excited about, which is a loading conveyor,” Antoniak said.
A loading conveyor provides a consistent loading experience that doesn’t require the lift operator bracing the chair for guests.
With one having been installed already on the crystal chairlift, SPR has published an instructional video for those who haven’t been introduced to this technology.
Another installation on the hill, a new sign will be placed at the top of Sunburst with a vertical SPR logo for guests to glance at and pose with, Macdonald said.
Last year a horizontal sign on Sundance got a lot of use from guests taking pictures and sitting atop it, and he said that one is being cleaned up and repainted for this season as well.
Kids adventure zone
Launched last year with the first kids’ adventure zone called the Bears’ Lair, the resort plans on phasing in four of these at various spots on the mountain, spanning multiple seasons.
This year, the addition is on Mt. Morissey, called Grouse’s Nest.
A little more than halfway down a green run called The Sticks, the adventure zone will have a banked slalom course and grouse characters hidden in the trees for kids to spot as they zoom down the hill.
“This is a collaboration with Zuzy Rocka,” Antoniak said. “She did the illustrations for the Bears’ Lair as well.”
Expanding on shuttle service
Guest feedback inspired SPR to extend the shuttle service for the 2024/25 winter season
The staff shuttle runs from 6:10 a.m. to 8 a.m. then turns into a complimentary guest shuttle from 8 a.m. to 4:10 p.m. for the daytime services and 5:40 p.m. to 9:40 p.m. for the evening service.
Rather than starting mid-December as it did last year, the evening service will be running all season.
Additionally, a radio GPS tracker designed by skiKrumb will be on the shuttles, sending live updates on their locations.
“Then we’re feeding that real time data into a public facing page on our site where you can see where the shuttle is,” Antoniak explained.
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