It’s a fine balance maintaining the spirit of a resort, while keeping up with current and necessary change. Over the years Sun Peaks Resort Corporation (SPRC) has seen its flurries of development, balanced by periods of stability.
Major capital projects, such as new chairlifts, have been delayed from the Master Development Plan (MDP) recently, mostly due to economic factors. But, many changes have happened to the resort’s landscape this summer, some visible to the public eye, and some not, as SPRC continues to improve its recreation facilities.
Jamie Tattersfield, operations manager for SPRC, is pleased with the progress and changes in many departments within the resort this summer.
“Our corporation has always taken good care to preserve the value of our beautiful natural assets, as well as our built assets, so even though we may not be undertaking any major capital works, we’re still actively improving and maintaining what we have,” said Tattersfield.
On Sunburst, skiers and boarders will see improved snow making capacity at the OSV Race Centre which, with the cooperation of the weather, will allow race training in early November. Elsewhere, on Mt. Morrisey, the survey line for the West Morrisey Lift has been cut to make sure that the future lift alignment fits with the MDP. Run development on West Morrisey is expected to start next summer.
With regards to other new runs, Tattersfield explained that, due to recent logging, there’s a lot of new terrain to ski on Sundance.
“We continued with our Forest Health program, restarted last summer. A major project of dead tree removal has been undertaken in the area east of Peak-A-Boo and south of Rambler,” explains Tattersfield. “This new open gladed area is known as ‘Bug Out’ and will provide some excellent off-piste skiing once we have adequate snow.”
Two new ski patroller positions have been added to the resort’s roster, and the Junior Ski Patrol program has been re-introduced for Sun Peaks high school students.
Additionally, the SPRC snow safety forecasting systems will see improvement to allow the Gil’s area to be included within the ski area boundary in 2014-15.
“It’s hard to believe that 20 years have gone by since we started the re-development of this resort,” said Tattersfield. “(That’s) 20 years of pretty hard use that was showing on some of our buildings and installations. This spring, we renovated Masa’s Bar and Grill, adding new bar tops, refinished wood, upgraded flooring and a fresh new look. We also did major roof upgrades at our alpine maintenance shop, and facility upgrades for our snow sports school.”
Behind the scenes SPRC has also upgraded their computer servers and installed a state of the art VHF radio communications system which will improve their operational communications throughout the year.
All they need now is snow.
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