Ski Trip to Sun Peaks, BC, Canada

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[Click here for my pictures from the January 2007 Telluride Ski Trip]
[Click here for my pictures from the January 2004 Snowmass trip]

The Sun Peaks trip started at 5:30 AM on Saturday March 8 with a taxi from Downers Grove to Chicago's O'Hare Airport for an Alaska Airlines flight to Seattle.  In Seattle we picked up a Horizon Air regional prop plane to Kelowna, BC.

The flight was overloaded so they had to negotiate with passengers to volunteer to be bumped, so the flight took off about an hour late.  In Kelowma we got a rather rickety shuttle bus for a 4 hour ride to Sun Peaks.  There were only 16 of us so we didn't rate a real bus.  We finally got to our hotel about 7:30 - 16 hours after leaving home.
Here is a view out the hotel window the next day:

and a view towards our hotel ("Nancy Greene's" Cahilty Lodge) from the skiers day lodge:
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Nancy Greene was the star skier in the 1968 Olympics.  She is director of skiing for the Sun Peaks resort and lives on the penthouse floor of the Cahilty Lodge.  Her presence was very prominent and she leads guided ski tours for the lodge and resort guests twice a day.  One wall of the hotel lobby is a display case of all her trophies, including these Olympic medals:
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Sun Peaks has a "Bavarian style" village, the kind Vail tried to develop and failed. Here are some pictures:

Sun Peaks has three mountains to ski on:
- Sun Dancer right out the door with a top elevation of 5677 feet,
- Mount Tod (7060 ft) with Crystal Bowl and the Burfield lift at 6825 ft, and
- Mount Morrisey toping out at 5484 ft.
The base elevation ranges from 3930 to 4180 feet.
Here is a shot of Mt. Tod and Sun Dancer from the top of Morrisey:

Two advanced runs on Tod - 5th-Avenue all moguled [click] and Intimidator groomed carpet smooth - as seen from the Sun Dance lift:

Looking down the Sun Dance lift and run at Mount Morrisey:

And: skiing down Three Bears  (showing the gladed style of about half of the runs on Sun Peaks)  with Morrisey in the background:
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Our return trip was even longer than the trip out.  The same rickety bus picked us up at 2 PM on Saturday and we got home about 4 PM on Sunday - 24 hours elapsed time, including a night at the Ramada in Kelowna and a 4 AM Sunday pickup for a 6 AM flight to Seattle.
Saturday morning rather than skiing we went for a snowshoe hike. Here are some pictures:

The view above is to Mount Tod.  The wide run you see is Broadway, another perfectly groomed advanced run.

While snowshoeing we saw a dog sled go by. Click to play [right click to download] a movie clip (5MB).

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