Feb. 11, 2009 - Issue #695: Hello Hello
Sun Peaks: On the senator’s secret service
In 1992, Tod Mountain was purchased by Nippon Cable, a ski-industry supplier looking to develop the area into a destination resort. The result of their efforts is Sun Peaks, a four-season outdoor playground ranked by Condé Nast Traveller’s 13th Annual Ski Poll as the second best ski hill in Canada and the 10th best in the world, overall. This news was enough to make me sit up and notice.
Sun Peaks is an eight-hour drive from Edmonton, and therefore much nicer than a drive to Whistler (Condé Nast Traveller’s top-ranked resort). It’s even easier by plane. Kamloops Airport has recently started to receive Westjet service and is receiving daily flights from Vancouver and Calgary. From Kamloops, Sun Peaks is a 45-minute drive past a little town called Heffley, on an unlit gritty road bordered by snowbanks, decorated disconcertingly with stuck automobiles.
Once at the top, our relief turned to ravenousness, suitably addressed at a steakhouse called Mantle’s. My daughter and I, trying to stick to an inconveniently-timed dietary cleanse, enjoyed juicy salmon fillets baked medium-rare, while our travelling companions tore apart a heap of ribs, braised to melting tenderness and presented vertically, dark towers of swinish ecstasy.
Revived by kilos of flesh, we felt sprightly enough to make the short trudge to the Sun Peaks skating rink, where we cut figures into the large artificial surface around clusters of wobbly Australians playing hockey with more vigour than coordination. The family-friendliness of Sun Peaks was carried in the aroma of grilling hotdogs and the presence of a magician in a bunny suit, merely the first animal mascot we would encounter on the hill.
Sun Peaks’s compact village of markets and hotels (the Delta being the most overtly grand) also offers adult nightlife through a disco and assorted bars, pubs and lounges. Due to advanced sleepiness, I failed to obtain personal assessments of these facilities, confining my revels to a pint of Czech lager purchased at the liquor store and brought into our room at Nancy Greene’s Cahilty Lodge. Owned and operated by the famous Olympian (and Chancellor of Thompson Rivers University) and her husband Al Raine, the Cahilty is an amiable hotel with quiet rooms and hallways full of memorabilia.
The next day we arose early, took coffee at the 5-Forty Café and headed off to pick up lift tickets ($71 for adults and $57 for youth). I packed Ms Youth into a half-day downhill class, strapped on my rental boards (performance Elans, brand new and shockingly easy in turns) and took off for the slopes.
Riding the lift at Sun Peaks, the first impression I got was one of a vast cloverleaf. From the central village the riding area spreads over three mountains (Tod, Sundance and Morrisey), each fed by a high-speed quad chairlift. Mt Tod, the largest, is further served by three secondary chairs, resulting in negligible wait times. In comparison, the congestion at Whistler is Blade Runner-esque.
Sun Peaks is not only spread out, but tall. Even while taking the snowshoe tour (a pleasantly effortful one-kilometre jaunt with a tour guide to a trapper’s cabin where marshmallows are toasted and hot chocolate swilled), I had no idea that there was so much free space.
With three mountains, each being somewhat different in slope and orientation to the sun, and 122 runs (not counting the back country peak accessed by snowcat), a person could happily ride for a week at Sun Peaks with little chance of boredom. People on return visits may notice the 20 new lines in a gladed area created from the removal of beetle-infected spruce trees, while terrain park riders have the benefit of a substantially revised and enlarged facility, sponsored by Monster Energy Drink.
According to sales and marketing manager Anne Haight, Sun Peaks is the second-largest winter resort in British Columbia, and it has the most snow. The area’s relatively early season is one of the reasons that Herman Meier and the rest of the Austrian National Team have made Sun Peaks their official North American facility.
Indeed, heavy snowfall had brought up Sun Peaks’s already excellent base by 35 cm, several days prior to our arrival. The groomed runs were lush and enjoyable, particularly the long cruisers such as the aptly named Five Mile Run. Due to unusually warm day temperatures (about plus 2), the snow in the ungroomed areas was slushy and a bit hairy for my skill level. Most of the runs are for intermediate riders like myself, but there are also plenty of challenges, such as the enjoyably terrifying Spillway, which mates a civil blue run to a shockingly convex runout. The speed makes it understandable why Sun Peaks is host to the Velocity Challenge (March 4 - 7), in which racers attempt to hit 180 km/h—and survive, presumably.
No longer racing, but still hella fast, is Nancy Greene. Though prominent in Sun Peaks advertising, and their Director of Skiing, I believed her to be a remote celebrity figurehead, more mythical than actual. But no, there she was at the top of the Sunburst Express chair at 1 pm, as she is most every day, waiting to ski with visitors,
In red jacket and knit cap, Greene looks pretty much exactly as she did winning gold medals. Genially waving away my bumbling congratulations on her recent nomination to the Senate (“you mean condolences”), Greene took us on several brisk runs, sizing us up with her coach’s eye. Regarding my stance and posture, she made a couple of friendly suggestions that nonetheless had the weight of command. One doesn’t normally obey strangers, but when Nancy Greene tells you to get off your heels, you’re not going to say, “no.” And, of course, she was right. Deep moguls instantly became easy with the weight staying on the ball of the foot, the head of the metatarsal. “I call that the G-spot,” Nancy Greene whispered, her eyes mischievous, my jaw slack.
Completing the surreality of this moment, and our ski trip itself, we then had our pictures taken with a bear and a kangaroo. Might that every day be so perfect. V
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