Sun Peaks cat skiing?

[Darwin]

I'm taking a trip to Sun Peaks in 2 weeks. Has anyone done cat skiing there? Saw it on their website. It's $250cdn for the day. How was it?

[mntlion]

drive N for a few hours to MW heli ski
$500 for standby but unlimited vert, start at 8:30 lunch, fat skis, etc all included.

sure twice the money, but way more then twice the vert .....

[mrw]

I was there about 5 years ago and hooked up with some guys and went bc by snowmobile. It's been a while but I met these guys thru the owner of a coffe shop which was kind of in the middle of the little village there. I shot them around $100. American for gas and off we went. I didn't get to make many turns however because it was pretty late in the season of a bad snow year. True to form , there was a 3' drop the day I was leaving which I managed to enjoy for a few hours prior to departure. On what I intended to be my last run, I lost a ski and almost missed my ride out.

[wicked_sick]

mntlion is right. It's more, but a lot better.

There terrain and amount of snow at Sun Peaks is not comparable to what's at MW heli. But if you're at Sun Peaks anyways and have the cash, then there's no reason not to check out the cat skiing.

[PNWbrit]

We spent a day with the Sun Peaks outfit the first season they ran it.

It was fun and the guys running it at the time were a great bunch but "terrain" was practically non-existent. It was still substantially better than riding the lifts with Nancy Greene's acolytes.

PM ski rick he used to live there and can probably let you know more.

[wicked_sick]

It's my home mountain as well, so if you've any more questions, feel free to ask

[RampagingMullet]

much cheaper, and just as good to hike out yourself. There is always a bunch of local skiing out back. you can just traverse out to the gills from the to of the burf chair. Gills drops you onto a cat track to get you back in bounds. You can hike/ skate further out to elevator, and exsecutionner glades, but they put you on an old fire road which is hard to see unless someone has already broken a trail. when you are traversing out from the top of the burf, the hill on your left will end about 100 yards from main face gills, ( and the end of the cat track at the bottom ) and to you left there will be a peak called skunk which is a fun short boot hike up.

[Darwin]

Thanks for the info guys. I am looking on the map and see that the gills and cat ski area is actually past the boundaries. Is Sun Peaks strict about going out there? Will they take my pass/ban me if I go out back?

Is taking the cat worth the $ to get more runs in the back area, as opposed to continually hiking out and lapping back using the lifts? On the map, after each run it would take a couple more lifts to get to the next lap, which might be timely.

[ski_rick]

The Gills and the entire backcountry is totally open, it's out of bounds, but you won't get in any trouble. There are two official entry points that have the avalanche danger signs posted, they're easy to find, follow the tracks. You'll probably see lots of people back there. There's a cat track that they regularly groom to get back into the resort from the Gills.

As for the cat skiing, the runs are short and the cat is slow. The will tell you it's kinda a "intro" to cat skiing. Conditions can be questionable, but if they've had a bunch of small snow events in the last week that can add up back there and you might find some really good skiing. I've seen plenty of people with big smiles on their faces having beers in Masas after being out cat skiing. The day I went it was all breakable crust for the most part.

If you're into doing a little bit of hiking, you can probably get nearly as much skiing in on your own (counting the run out to the bottom each time) and see basically the same terrain. If you want an intro to cat skiing and not to hike, it's not bad.

If you can get a day at MW for $500, you will get way more then twice the skiing and WAY MORE then twice the experience.