Okanagan family getaways are the ticket for affordability, access

Let me count the ways my family was injured during our ski vacation.

Nik, my nephew, was dripping blood from his nose after one too many beginning-snowboarder face plants. Chris, another nephew, had a throbbing headache after bashing his (yes, helmeted) head skiing. Stephanie, my daughter, couldn't move her arm after catapulting into a ravine on her board. I was nursing injured pride and bruises after going airborne skiing down a ridge to our condo, thudding inelegantly to the ground just outside the living-room window. All these mishaps came in just one day at Silver Star, a British Columbia ski resort that bears absolutely no responsibility for the injuries. It's just what can happen when 18 people — my extended family — ski together.

Despite the sore bodies, Silver Star turned out to have all the right stuff for our family reunion last winter (and everyone healed quickly). It's one of a string of ski resorts in central B.C.'s Thompson-Okanagan region that are smaller, cheaper and more family-friendly than Whistler, B.C.'s mega-resort.

Don't get me wrong; I love Whistler and have skied there since the early 1970s. But at Silver Star, two ski-in, ski-out condos that could fit all of us cost about half of what we could find at Whistler.

Silver Star's small ski village, with a blocklong main street of somewhat gaudy faux Victorian buildings, suited us better than Whistler. There was little nightlife to lure away the youngsters in our group who would have been tempted by Whistler's dozens of trendy shops, cafes and nightclubs. Instead, we all stuck together, from toddler to great-grandmother, in Norman Rockwell-type evenings of card games, sing-alongs and giant home-cooked dinners. The 20-somethings did hit the bar one night, but came home after an hour or two.

And the skiing? Silver Star, in the rolling Monashee Mountains, is not nearly as big as Whistler Blackcomb (and doesn't have the dramatic craggy peaks) but it was just fine for our three days of skiing. There were easygoing cruiser runs for our slower-going skiers and challenging chutes and bumps for the advanced ones, especially in the black-diamond or double black-diamond runs of Power Gulch chair. And an almost five-mile long intermediate run made for happy cruising.

Some comparative stats:

Silver Star has six chairs, including the new Alpine Meadows quad opening this winter, a welcome alternative to the nearby, and old, two-person Summit chair that frequently stalled during our stay, leaving us dangling for up to 15 minutes in the cold. There also are two T-bars, two beginner "magic carpets" (and two tubing-hill lifts). The lifts serve 112 runs (including some very short novice runs).

Whistler has 21 chairs and gondolas on its adjacent Whistler and Blackcomb mountains, plus 12 surface lifts, that serve more than 200 runs. And Whistler dwarfs Silver Star in some other ways; Silver Star has 3,065 skiable acres of terrain and a vertical rise of 2,500 feet; Whistler has 8,100 skiable acres and a 5,280 vertical-feet rise.

But bigger isn't always better. Silver Star gets more dependable snow, and more powder, than Whistler since it's in colder, interior B.C. on the edge of the Okanagan Valley. Its village is higher (some runs go down from it) at 5,280 feet compared to Whistler Village's 2,214 feet, where the snow is often wet — or it's simply raining.

For cross-country skiers, Silver Star easily beats Whistler. There are almost 40 miles of groomed Nordic trails, something Whistler can't match with its often soggy-snow, village-area trails. The cross-country is good enough that Canada's national Nordic team has trained at Silver Star.

Still, Silver Star isn't going to put Whistler out of business, but it is a nice alternative for a ski getaway, even though it's about a seven-hour drive from Seattle, compared to about 4-½ hours for Whistler.

Sun Peaks and beyond

To scope out a ski place for our next family reunion, I headed to Sun Peaks, north of Silver Star near Kamloops.

I first skied there in the 1960s when it was simply called Tod Mountain and had just a handful of runs and a bare-bones day lodge. My family stayed in a crummy motel in nearby Kamloops; we all got food poisoning at an even crummier restaurant.

What a difference the decades have made.

Sun Peaks has mushroomed into British Columbia's second biggest ski resort after Whistler, with 3,678 acres of skiable terrain and a vertical rise of 2,891 feet. And it's being as smartly developed as Whistler, with a pleasant pedestrian-centered ski-in, ski-out village and 121 well laid-out runs on three mountains that loom over the narrow valley that contains the village. The runs are served by 12 lifts, including the new quad chair called "Elevation."

The smart design isn't surprising considering that Nancy Greene, a veteran Canadian ski racer and 1968 Olympic gold medalist, and her husband, Al Raine, have helped grow Sun Peaks as well as Whistler. Greene and her husband moved from Whistler to Sun Peaks in the early 1990s; she's the Sun Peaks director of skiing, and offers free ski tours almost every day to all-comers.

Sun Peaks' village, at 4,116 feet, is almost double the size of Silver Star's, with seven main hotels plus B&Bs and condos. Big, luxurious second homes (many available for nightly rentals) are on the outskirts of the village.

Sun Peaks lures lots of Washington skiers and boarders; about 15 percent of winter visitors are from the Seattle area, said resort spokeswoman Ashley Tait.

While it's growing fast, Sun Peaks remains smaller-scale, quieter and cheaper than Whistler; its cozy village centers around a two-block pedestrian walkway lined with semi-Bavarian style buildings.

Add in more sun, again with often better snow than Whistler, and Sun Peaks seems like a good place for our next family ski reunion ... hopefully without quite as many injuries.

Kristin Jackson: kjackson@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2271