Panorama Mountain Village, Canada - BC

Miles Gouch from UNITED KINGDOM writes:

We have just returned from our second trip to Panorama (Panorama Mountain Village) having booked a late deal through Inghams. During our first stay in March 2004 our kids (7&9) learned to ski in the great school and we were amazed at how quiet the resort is with virtually no queuing on any of the lifts. The down side was the lack of fresh snow and the limited evening options for family eating/entertainment. Having returned six years later the lack of snow was again a big issue, the options for evenings for families are not greatly improved and comparitively the cost of everything in the resort, ski pass, hire, tuition, food and drink has soared. The General Store carries very little other than beer, bread and crisps so healthy self catering without a car is impossible.
We have skied in Europe for a number of years since and our group has come on in it's skiing ability and to be honest, if you exclude the terrain covered by double black runs, we found the resort quite small with the skiing variety limited as most areas can be covered at least twice in a long ski day. Fresh snow would have changed all of this but a common theme from both this forum and discussions with locals is the concern over the extent of natural snowfall that they get. I'm not sure how they measure the 1 metre of snow that is supposed to have been at The Summit but with rocks and mud showing all over they were being optimistic to say the least. The people in Panorama Mountain Village resort are fantastically friendly, very polite and the mountain scenery is stunning. If you do go, take advantage of The Mountain Friend free guiding service. They are all locals, mostly retired, and do a great job of selling the resort with a lot of laughs. It is a great place to learn if you book a package in advance but I doubt whether we would return, even if we got the offer of another great deal.

2010-03-04