Sun Peaks saves last winter's snow to open race training early
Insulated blankets kept up to 80 per cent of three giant snow piles through summer. About 8,000 racers are expected from Nov. 6.
SUN PEAKS, B.C. —
Sun Peaks Resort is spreading snow it saved from last winter onto its race courses, letting ski teams start training weeks before most hills have natural snow. 1
Three piles, each holding 17,000 cubic metres of stored snow, were uncovered over the weekend and are being spread across the Nancy Greene International Race Centre. Officials say that is enough to cover the equivalent of 20 football fields of runs, which should be race-ready in a few weeks. 1
“We will probably have between 20 and 30 different teams — about 8,000 participants — that we anticipate seeing ... when the race centre opens up on November the 6th,” said Tim Foster, chief of mountain operations at the resort, about 40 kilometres northeast of Kamloops. 1
How the snow was saved
Sun Peaks is the first mountain in Canada to use the system from Finnish company Snow Secure. Snow is plowed into large piles in spring and covered with insulated blankets that keep up to 80 per cent of the volume through summer and fall. 1
The resort laid out 18 blankets, made of extruded polystyrene with real-time temperature monitoring, for the first time in spring 2025, and said it paid $180,000 for them. The technology has been used in Europe for decades. 12
A head start for racers
Dustin Koepke, program director of the Sun Peaks Alpine Club, said the early start helps athletes who might otherwise travel to Europe to train. “It's a huge plus where a lot of teams don't get snow until December. It gives us a month advantage where we can be skiing early,” he said. 1
Racers from across Canada, the United States and Japan are expected once the race centre opens. 1
Environment Canada is predicting a significantly milder-than-average winter across much of the country, with a super El Niño event bringing mild Pacific air that reduces seasonal snowfall. 1
CBC meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe said last year that the spring snowpack in the mountains of B.C.'s southern Interior has dropped 20 to 40 per cent since the 1970s. 2
Sources
- CBC News: Sun Peaks gears up for early ski training season thanks to snow-saving technology
- CBC News: The surprisingly low-tech way a B.C. ski resort is saving its snow (Andrew Kurjata, Shelley Joyce, May 2025)
This article was reported and written by Ethan Clarke and edited by Daniel Okafor. It draws on the sources above, which are credited in the text. Our standards · Report an error
