Silver Star in BC - anyone know about late March conditions

Flatlander

New member
I have always taken my family to Fernie for our annual Spring Break trip but a couple times in the last few years the conditions have really gotten sloppy. Other times have been fantastic.

Friends tell me that Silver Star resort is higher and keeps snow better through the spring but has no snowmaking.

Anybody out there with first hand experience to draw on?
 
I skied Big White, Silver Star, Apex plus 2 days cat and one heli in Revelstoke in February of the epic 1999 season. Lots of snow and only 1/2 day of sun in a week.

I have snow stats and analysis of Big White and Silver Star at http://bestsnow.net/crocnet.htm . If you're there a week you should probably try all 3 Okanagan areas.

Big White is high altitude by B.C. standards but the main part of the area faces south. The steeps face east and the long Gem Lake chair faces west and goes lower than the main base. There was not even a hint of spring conditions during my visit due to ongoing snowfall and chronic fog/overcast (thus the nickname Big Whiteout).

Silver Star is lower and gets less snowfall. The steep Putnam Creek backside has similar elevation range as Fernie but it does face north and is less likely to get rain.

The front side of both areas will have instant spring conditions if the sun comes out in March due to south exposure. Most of this terrain is intermediate and groomed though.

I only got to ski about 1/4 of Apex's terrain due to the weather closing the main lift. Snowfall is lower than Silver Star but main exposures are north and east.

In late March/April Sunshine Village, the backside of lake Louise and the Whistler alpine have the best odds of packed powder conditions in western Canada. Also the upper elevations at Panorama and Kicking Horse, though those areas have other concerns.
 
Thanks for the info Tony. I will have to see what kind of snow we get and how big the base gets before I pull the trigger.
 
I skiied Big White last year on Easter Weekend which was the middle of April and had a great time - it had just snowed 15-20 cm and had fresh turns all day. It was very much still winter up there! Falcon, Powder, Blackforest and Cliff have the best snow in my experience. Especially the gladed blue areas to skiers left of Blackforest. There's a great little area just off the top of Blackforest too, when everyone else is turning left off the chair, turn right and head down the slope - it's a nice short steeper pitch with decent spacing in the trees. Sometimes there's nice stashes in there.

Putnam creek at Silverstar can get a little icy sometimes if there hasn't been snow in a while and it hardly gets any sun so it doesn't soften up very well late in the day either - the front side does though. The front side has some very fun fast groomers. Out of the two I like Big White better, the only exception to that is if Silverstar has a bunch of snow, then Putnam becomes quite fun if you like steeps! Silverstar has very limited tree skiing though.
 

Attachments

  • Marley.jpg
    Marley.jpg
    61.3 KB · Views: 2,982
blackmtn":t1apy76c said:
Yep I was pretty amazed the first time I saw them. Sometimes they can turn into natural hits too!

Not quite a snow ghost, but our own J. Spin does a pretty good job with that concept at 4:24 in this video: http://www.firsttracksonline.com/index. ... almie.html

BTW, Spin's a beautiful skier -- if you really want to see him in some gorgeous powder sequences, check out the 1:14 time mark in this video:

http://www.firsttracksonline.com/index. ... ision.html

Or this video, where he's the Alpine skier in the red jacket at 1:52:

http://www.firsttracksonline.com/index. ... ckies.html
 
What type of video is that embedded in the webpage? I'm on a mac using Firefox and it tells me that it doesn't know what plug-in to download. I'm guessing it's Windows Media Player...
 
Back
Top