"Where's Mt. Badly?"
That was the question we had asked our friends a year ago when they told us they discovered a gem of a ski resort. A year ago we were still stuck in our household bubbles and confused if people living in Burnaby could go play at a park in Vancouver. I really didn't think we would get a chance to drive the 5-ish hours close to Oliver, BC but we did and it was fantastic.
The Good.
- Wapiti Creek Lodge is beautiful and big enough so we could stay there with 2 other families. Even the other family that stayed at a different place came over at the chalet for meals.
- We rented 2 floors so we had two hot tubs. One of the kids and one for adults.
- No lift lines -my Garmin watch says we did 14-21 runs a day!
- Two of our friends were injured so they couldn't ski with us but Mt. Badly has an option where you pay $15 to take the ski lift to the top and you can snowshoe back down on a trail that parallels one of the ski runs. That was great to be able to see them as we skied down.
- it's actually affordable - a day pass for an adult is $65 and kids is $45. That's cheaper than a ticket at Cypress
- lots of fun terrain - there are 2 ski lifts and something everyone liked. The kids liked a blue run named Power Keg and their favourite black diamond runs were Southridge, Honky Tonk and Rock Star.
- they have hot foods at the Corduroy Cafe and the burgers are actually pretty decent but we only ate at the café once. All other meals, we took turns cooking for the entire crew of 8 adults and 9 kids.
The Bad.
- super old school ticket booth as in there is one person sitting in a hut and everyone has to line up there to get your tickets. There is no option for online tickets or buying multiple days in advance. We needed to wait about 30 minutes to get our passes in the morning. They literally need to write your name on the ticket with a Sharpie pen
- there's no village or shops or anywhere to walk around so don't expect it to be like Whistler or Big White but at least it's nice and quiet at night and you can see so many stars!!!
- it's such a small population that the lifts are not open 7 days a week unless it's peak season. During the winter season, the lifts only run Thursday to Monday so plan to end of the week and for the weekend!
The Snowy.
so much snow and sunshine and since it's a fairly small mountain with 2 chair lifts, the older kids could go ski with their friends on their own and we always found them at the end of the day
- there was lots of powder in the glades and this year the kids could keep up with us
- the dads got to go do some black diamond runs together
The verdict : we would definitely go back again especially if it was with these lovely people
