Kimberley, Canada - BC

M.R.Parashchak from UNITED KINGDOM writes:

Hell of a trip to get here - 9 hour flight followed by a 4 and a half hour bus ride. Lovely quiet resort. Most places shut by ten pm, but snow is excellent and thebinstructors and rental staff couldn't be more pleasant and helpful. Almost no queues at the lifts, apart from the the half term week (if you have kids you know what I mean!) and only about a third of the runs were groomed. The mountain is not a big one, and most good skiers would get through the runs in a few days. There are only about 4 lifts, and a couple could do with upgrading. The resort though is very customer focused and the lessons we had, had only 4 or 5 people in at most, often just 2 or 3, were excellent, and I would definitely recommend this ski school for the quality of the instructors.
No mountain restaurants but a fairly efficient and very friendly cafe at the base station.
Accommodation is far superior to that in Europe ( mind you, most accommodation in European resorts is expensive, pokey and poor value for money) for the same price and staff couldn't be more helpful. There was a bus every half hour into the small town, (which always seemed deserted) but the service ended at 9pm which didn't give much time to go to eat out, as there was only 1 restaurant open on site (Kelseys). Getting food up to the apartment was a pain, carrying loads of bags around the town and waiting for the bus in the cold. No shops on site or near the base station.
We stayed at the Trickle Creek Inn which was lovely, but the breakfast facilities were inadequate and the food poor quality.
Yrips out were very expensive, prohibitively so, for anyone with a family (dog sledding was $210 - about £110 per person- for a 4 hour trip!) and the restaurants in town were similarly priced to those in the UK.
Despite this negative sounding report, I would go back, if only for the guaranteed snow and the friendliness of the resort.

2008-02-20