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Detailed reports and pictures

Sunshine Village, AB - 1/25, 1/29 & 1/30/2005

Pictures and video are below.

Helen and I rode together on 1/25 and 1/29, and I rode alone for a half day on 1/30 as that was the day we were flying home out of Calgary. Sunshine Village turned out to be our favorite area of the trip. I think given better snow conditions Kicking Horse might have edged out Sunshine, but it's tough to say for sure given Kicking Horse's current weak lift system.

The Layout: Sunshine Village is just outside of Banff, AB. It's a good sized ski area, with 3,358 skiable acres, 3,514 ft of vertical, and a top elevation of 8,954 ft. The bottom 1,187 ft of vertical below the gondola midstation is practically worthless, though. It's just a green run out back to the gondola base and the parking lot, so the real max vertical you're likely to experience is about 2,327 ft. There are 10 lifts serving 3 peaks. You can find trail maps here.

Arriving at Sunshine we were instantly reminded of Crystal because of the layout of the parking. The road ends in a canyon with long, narrow parking lots on either side of the road with the gondola base at the end of them all. They even had shuttles running from the base to the far lots that are a lot like Crystal's! Riding up the gondola all the way to the top takes you to what most would consider the real "base area" at 7,000 ft where the lodges and the majority of the lifts are. Standing in the village, you can ski everything you can see around you, from Wawa to Standish to the Continental Divide, then down under Wolverine and over to Goat's Eye. There are 5 main areas: Wawa, with it’s wide blue cruisers, Standish with a few cruisers and more black runs, Lookout Mountain serviced by the Continental Divide, Angel and Tee Pee Town chairs with some nice blue and black runs, and below the village the area under the Wolverine lift with a lot of nice blue runs, and finally Goat's Eye Mountain with tons of blacks. Most of the chairs have a pretty small amount of vertical: only 500 - 700 ft. Only Goat's Eye and Lookout Mountain get you any serious vertical: 1,900 ft and 1,200 - 1,500 ft respectively. Although short, the runs on Mt. Standish are actually a whole lot of fun.

The Lift Lines: the worst lift lines we experienced were on the Continental Divide chair on Saturday and Sunday. This is a popular chair, and on Sunday it took me 20 min to get through the singles line on my last trip up that chair. There was never a line at Goat's Eye, even on the weekend, which was amazing to me.

The Conditions: Sunshine got hit by the warming cycle that the rest of the Northwest got in mid January. On 1/25 & 1/29 there hadn't been any new snow since the warming. The snow at the top of the lifts wasn't bad: firm, but you could sink an edge in pretty well and still have fun with it. Snow closer to the village at 7,000 ft was much firmer, with anything off the groomers being pretty darn solid and painful. The groomers were fine, though, and actually pretty good for carving. It snowed lightly all day on 1/29, though there was no real accumulation while we were there.

On 1/30 I rode for a half day since we were flying home that day. Sunshine reported 2" of fresh, which translated into nothing on the wind-exposed slopes, and up to 6" where the blown snow collected. Finding those stashes was the challenge of the day, and there were many to be had. The snow bonded surprisingly well to the old hard snow everywhere except the most scraped up places.

The Terrain: For beginners, there are very mellow green runs from the Angle, Strawberry, Wawa, Mt. Standish, and Wolverine/Jackrabbit lifts. All of the lifts except Strawberry offer a variety of decent blue's, some groomed and some not. We had a lot of fun lapping the cruisers under Wawa, Standish, and the Continental Divide chairs.

The steeper stuff can be found mostly on Goat's Eye Mountain, though there are a number of blacks scattered around the other peaks. Goat's Eye was a blast though. It would be fantastic with decent snow, but even with the conditions we had it was pretty darn good. 1,900 ft of vertical on one high-speed quad with the upper quarter of it above the tree line. Helen and I just had to check out #82, Cleavage, which goes through two huge rock outcroppings. Unfortunately, it wasn't open from the top, so we had to take Ewe First (#83), then cut over to get the last half of it. The tops of these runs were pretty good. As we entered the trees, though, we found big, icy moguls until we met up with the big groomer #71. A short walk/skate out skier's left from the lift takes you around the side of Goat's Eye to the really good stuff. You can skate around to Wildside (#86), and you can traverse a little further and pickup most of Farside (#87), but to get any further you need to hike up from the lift. The hike was closed on 1/25, so I went out to Wildside via the traverse. Even with the bad snow, Wildside was still pretty good... until you got back to the trees :) It would be epic on a powder day, as would the rest of the stuff out there, and all of Goat's Eye really.

Finally, there is Delirium Dive, accessible via a short hike from the top of the Continental Divide lift. It's billed as an "extreme skiing" area, and you're required to have a transceiver, shovel, and partner to enter. Not having any of those things, I didn't do it on this trip. Maybe next time. Inspecting The Dive from Goat's Eye, I suspect the worst part is the initial drop in. After that, you should be greeted with some nice lines that would be awesome with powder. I took The Shoulder (#16) over from Lookout Mountain to Goat's Eye on 1/30, which drops you out into the run-out from Delirium Dive... it's flat to a little up hill, requiring a lot of walking or skating to get out of it. Annoying, but most probably worth it.

Other runs we had fun with on this trip: Donkey's Tail (#50) just because of the word "donkey", and The Waterfall (#56), which was comprised mostly of moguls made of blue ice.

The Food and Lodges: we ate at Sunshine Village on 1/25 and 1/29, both times at the restaurant on the top floor of the main lodge. The food was damn good, and the restaurant was not very crowded even on Saturday when the main seating area below was overrun. The chili was very good. Helen got the Shepard's Pie, which I believe she was genetically predisposed to get, and it was also excellent.

Oh, Sunshine Village has some of the cleanest bathrooms of any ski area I've ever been too. I was impressed on multiple occasions. In addition to being so clean, they also had these groovy water free urinals that are supposed to be good for the environment.

The Town of Banff: Banff is like Whistler Village, with cars. Lots of touristy shops (mostly featuring bears), places to eat, and snow sports stores. All of the shops close early, while the restaurants and sports stores stay open late (one snowboard shop we went in stays open until 11pm every night.) Parking was ample. It's a nice place, with pretty much everything you'd need. It looks like there's a ton of lodging, from the super-nice Fairmont to you're average hotel. There's a cool snowboard shop with all girl-only gear called Rude Girls that was pretty cool.

Odd Observations: lots and lots of British tourists... we actually blame them for the bad Chinese food in Banff :) Everyone who skis in Alberta apparently must have the bar down on the lift.

Pictures and Videos: these are some of the pictures that we took that I think are more interesting from a snowboarding perspective. If you want to see the really nice artistic ones, check out Helen's site at Artgeekstudios.

This is a video from our day at Sunshine Village. It's a little over 2 min long, and it's 8mb so you'll want to right click and use "Save target as..." to save it to your local disk.

Is that a banana in your pocket? I found out you can't really eat a banana while moving at any decent speed. The peels flap up in the wind and you can't get at the good part without eating the skin. It's really annoying... I guess that's why you never see pictures of monkey's eating bananas while running or swinging through the trees...

The views from the lifts are pretty nice at Sunshine Village. This is looking right off of the Continental Divide chair.

Riding under the Continental Divide chair.

Looking up the Continental Divide chair at the lower half of the slope... these are some of the green runs at the bottom back towards the lift. The lift goes about twice as far as what you can see here.

Delirium Dive as seen from Goat's Eye Mountain. The top of the Continental Divide chair is just below the peak out of site on the other side. The run out is to the lower right of the picture.

Another shot of The Dive from higher on Goat's Eye. You can click on this picture for the full size version. There are 3 skiers on the slope, each highlighted in the full size version. I know those are skiers because I watched them descend (very slowly) for about 5 min. This was shot on the afternoon of 1/29.

Lookout Mountain from Wawa. There are 3 lifts visible. They are, from left to right, Tee Pee-Town, Angel, and Continental Divide. You can see a lot of fences on the hill. I believe they use them to help reduce snow loss due to wind. Delirium Dive is visible to the left, looking far more imposing than it does from Goat's Eye.