Sunshine Village, Canada - Alberta

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Sunshine Village summary

Sunshine Village sits in the middle of Banff National Park and offers an excellent opportunity to ski above the tree line and see the magnificent back-country of B.C. and Alberta. In a single run, you can cross the continental divide, skiing from Alberta to B.C and back again. 100% natural cover is pretty much a certainty as Sunshine Village has an elevation and proximity to the divide that usually results in more snow here than at any other Alberta resort and, more often than not, it is the champagne powder variety! Sunshine Village boasts fantastic lift-accessed steeps and they have recently opened new free-ride zones on Goat's Eye Mountain and off the backside of Lookout Mountain, with terrain to test even the pros.

Resorts close to Sunshine Village include: Banff Mt Norquay (16 km), Nakiska (47 km), Lake Louise (49 km), CMH Bobbie-Burns (73 km), Panorama Mountain Village (78 km),

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	Trails (Pistes): 108	Halfpipes: 1
	Summit: 2729 m	Toplift: m
	Beg: 22% Int: 31% Adv: 47%	Terrain Parks: 1
	Vertical Drop: 1071 m	X-Country: -
	Lifts: 14 (1 gondola, 9 chair lifts, 4 surface lifts)	Snowmaking: -
	Gondolas / Cable Cars: 1	Slopeside accom.: Y
	Restaurants: 7	Acres of ski: 3100
	Bars: 7	Nearest Airport: Calgary
	Nearest Train: Edmonton	Info phone: +1/403/7624421 \| Sunshine Village Resort Info Website

Visitor Reviews of Sunshine Village

charlie from CANADA writes:

Most of the poor reviews for Sunshine (Sunshine Village) seem to center on the numerous 'flat spots' on the hill. There is no denying this, but all you need to do is attach yourself to a knowledgeable local for a day, and you will learn everything you need to navigate the hill.

Once you know Sunshine, it is the best hill in Alberta by far, with loads of hugely technical chute and terrain skiing, gorgeous powder bowls, and a real lack of Armani-clad Eurotrash poseurs (yeah, I'm looking at you, Louise and whistler).

Sunshine gets tons of dry fluffy snow, and on runs like Tipi-town, Standish, and the bowls of Wa-Wa, ten centimeters becomes 2ft of fresh every time.

The lack of exposed wind surfaces, and the lack of snow-making equipment means there is almost no icing, even in spring conditions. Grooming is minimal, there is enough corduroy for the greenies to be able to learn, but otherwise the staff spend their time maintaining snow-fences, farming the copious snow, and marking hazards. I have seldom been on a mountain with more varied terrain, and best of all, almost every run has a green path, a blue path, and a black one, so skiers of varying ability can ski together all day and never be bored.

The mountain is in the park, which means, thankfully, that it has been spared the Disneyesque marketing fairy-tale ski village treatment. There is an on-hill hotel, with the best hot tub I have ever been in, but otherwise this is your fathers ski-hill: cafeteria trays, friendly bartender in trappers pub, and a good thing too. Who needs lodge lizards and posing bunnies? Aren't we here to ski?

Patrol is by some of the friendliest and most knowledgeable skiers I've ever seen...and on slow days it's easy to ski a few runs and get a real feel for the mountain with them. In addition, sunshine has an excellent snow-host program, free, which pairs you up with a guide for a few hours. It's a good way to learn the basics of the mountain an avoid the flat spots everyone has been talking about...

I sound like a cheerleader here, so let me give you the flaws as well. Parking here is really bad. You want to be at the hill by 8am, or you will be walking a long way to the base gondola. On days when you don't show up until 11, they have valet parking. It costs 20$, but it's worth it. You avoid a walk that could be 2km, or an hour wait for a shuttle bus.

Another big minus for Sunshine is Goats Eye mountain. The skiing there is fantastic, if it has snow (which it has less than half the time.) It's frigidly cold, windswept, and usually rocky (but after a good dump, it's the best in-bounds skiing in the Rockies, bar none (caveat: I have not yet skied Revelstoke) But it's a big teasing pile of rocks, and drives me insane.

The final thing I dislike about Sunshine is the prices, not that they are more expensive than anywhere else really; just that skiing in general is overpriced.