Canada’s best-kept skiing secret that’s yearning for British visitors

Powder by day? Quaffable wines by night? Blessed with ancient volcanic soils and abundant snowfall, British Columbia’s Okanagan microclimate punches above its weight in powder, pinots, and little pleasures.

“We basically get paid in powder and Gore-tex up here,” enthused Drew Gobeil, Ski Patrol Director at Big White Ski Resort – the region’s crowning glory. With the clock just gone 8am, Drew’s workday was off to an early start, yet he and his colleagues were clearly thrilled with the job’s fringe benefits. Nearly 20cm of fresh powder demanded intense investigation.

I had signed up for the resort’s First Tracks programme, a $230 (£130) splurge that includes a private instructor for 90 minutes and an hour of exclusive access to runs off the Ridge Rocket chairlift before the mountain opens to the general public. The dawning sky was silver with flakes and light boot-top powder coated the smoothly groomed pistes beneath.

Private powder. It’s one of the advantages of choosing what is, by European standards, a small ski area – 16 lifts, 119 runs and 1,500 acres of glades and alpine terrain. Located on the western edge of the Monashee Mountains, Big White sees an average annual snowfall of six metres.

It’s effortless hero skiing (so-called because of how you feel when riding it) too, on rolling intermediate-friendly pitches. Unlike in Europe, all in-bounds terrain is avalanche-controlled and patrolled. Without even dipping into the glades that blanket the side of the pistes, we do four laps before the 200 keen skiers and snowboarders waiting in line get their chance. “They’ll be up here for two hours burning up their legs and then the mountain will be quiet again,” said Drew. At 9am he gives the call to release the hounds.

The convenience of a resort where almost 100 per cent of accommodation is ski-in/ski-out is not lost on the devotees, from a great Commonwealth of snow-nations – around one in 10 seasonaires are British, a good chunk are from New Zealand and Canada, and half are from Australia – who are attracted by the relaxed atmosphere and lower prices than you can expect in bigger Canadian resorts, such as Whistler and Banff.

While Big White doesn’t expect UK visitors to exceed 600 this winter, according to senior vice president Michael Ballingall, they anticipate that to rise: “[UK] is less than 2 per cent of our total skier visits… This year with early snow conditions, we started to see a massive increase to our website out of the UK, which resulted in more visitors to our resort.”

Owned by Australian Desmond Schumann since 1985, the family ski business is now in its third generation – a rarity in an industry increasingly dominated by a few major conglomerates. The “Vail-ification” of the ski holiday experience – surge pricing, banner advertisements, aggressive promotion of season passes – has been linked to football-field-long lift queues across North America. By comparison, a typical weekday at an independent resort like Big White attracts 3,000 to 6,000 visitors. Not that it never gets busy, of course, but even after the crowd dispersed up and across the mountain, the powder pitches remained well into the afternoon, long after my legs whined for mercy.

Mercy here typically comes in the form a private outdoor hot tub. Complete with kitchen, dining area, electric fireplace, washer-dryer, and two TVs, my condo was bigger than many London flats. Another “normal” perk for a bijou village – whose 18,000 beds are 90 per cent condos and just 10 per cent hotel – was ski-from-the-door access to the mountain.

Further ease came via the Snow Host programme. Two dozen orange-jacketed volunteers are staged at various points around the mountain to assist visitors and conduct scheduled tours of the slopes. It’s a great way to get your bearings in a new environment – and it’s free.

Leading me through glades dotted with Engelmann spruce and the lodgepole pine – Big White’s signature snow ghosts stand guard like frozen sentinels – is Sandi Howe, a retired engineer with a non-skiing husband and a love for skiing. A favourite for the tour is the longest run of 4.5 miles: Round the World weaves top-to-bottom from the summit of the Alpine t-bar to the bottom of the Gem Lake chairlift, past the dotted cliffs and chutes around Gem Lake. “But there are always options,” she explained, as fog swirled around us. “We can head over to Black Forest, where trees provide a visual reference and lots of easier, shorter runs. And no matter where you go, there is a green run off every chairlift.” After an afternoon snaking around the piste map, it’s soon a good time to take advantage of the many non-ski diversions.

Connected by a tiny gondola for foot passengers, the well-signed Happy Valley is a hub of activities that makes Big White a family favourite. There’s tubing, Nordic skiing, and snowshoeing. Visitors can take an Olympic-sized twirl on Canada’s highest outdoor skating rink, ride snowmobiles through the forest or snuggle into a horse-drawn sleigh ride to a cabin for dinner.

For me, a day’s skiing segued neatly into a rewarding hour at the Stonebridge Spa – exactly 10 steps from my condo door – where the highly-skilled Danielle eased away the travails of a Canadian winter. Later, the stroll across the snow-blanketed pedestrian village to dinner – a superb Italian restaurant called Sopra for tuna carpaccio, tender braised short ribs, and a bottle of local Cabernet Sauvignon – took a relaxing three minutes.

Further rewards flowed straight into my glass on a final must-visit. Stylish and sophisticated, the Okanagan winery tour is a match made in apres-ski heaven. Five-time Winery of the Year winner, Mission Hill Estate is an impressive operation complete with 1,200-person amphitheatre, 12-storey bell tower, and an art collection that includes Henry Moore sculptures and 3000-year-old Roman amphorae. The private cellar tour provides a thirst-building look-see, before settling into a cosy salon for a tasting with delicious nibbles. The ruby-red finale – a Bordeaux varietal blend called Oculus – sent me off in a raspberry and vanilla cloud of satisfaction.

Who would have thought ski-life and wine-life could co-exist in such happy proximity? Not just France, that’s who.

Essentials

Frontier Ski (020 8776 8709) offers seven nights at Stonebridge Lodge from £2,175pp, room only, in a one-bedroom ski-in/ski-out condo with kitchen, return flights with Air Canada into Kelowna via Vancouver, return transfers and six-day lift passes. Leslie was a guest of Big White Ski Resort.