A screenshot from a webcam at Big White Ski Resort, Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023.
Image Credit: Big White Ski Resort
December 27, 2023 - 6:00 PM
Conditions at ski resorts in the Lower Mainland are poor so far this season some only have a few runs open and at least one has yet to open.
Meanwhile, Big White Ski Resort near Kelowna just might break an attendance record this year.
The Kelowna-area ski hill got off to a slow start this year, but is now seeing extremely high rates of attendance during their holiday season, the busiest time of the year.
“Our guests up here right now are predominantly from what we call the long-haul market. So mostly from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, people that want a white Christmas or that usually spend Christmas at a resort, but Vancouver is our largest market in the world so there are many people up here from the Lower Mainland,” Michael J. Ballingall with Big White Ski Resort said.
He said the resort measures water intake to see how busy they are and right now they are just 2% below their biggest holiday season in 2019.
While the conditions might have been poor at the beginning of the season, they've improved with most runs open to the public.
“The temperature in the valley is much different from the temperature on the mountain," Ballingall said. "We average 24 to 27 feet of snow a year and we think we’ll be above that at the end of the year because it’s only the beginning, we still have January, February, March and the beginning of April to go.”
With ski resorts in the Lower Mainland suffering from a lack of snow, and at least one resort still closed, Ballingall said some skiers and boarders might come to Big White.
“What happens, which is a travesty really, is that we have thousands of people that won’t learn how to ski this year,” he said. “The average person in the Lower Mainland who is a casual skier seeing the conditions down there might not go back to ski next year for Christmas, and the hope is that they’ll do it eventually, but they truly might not.”
Ballingall has a warning for those venturing onto runs that are still closed on Big White.
“We have caught people on the closed runs today. Those who do tend to get hurt,” he said. “The ski patrol is busy when the conditions are like this and we recommend that everybody stays on the open runs.”
For the latest conditions at Big White Ski Resort go here.
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