Monday, February 11, 2019

Baldy Mountain was the best on this trip

Baldy Mountain is great.  The name can be confusing, because there are several Baldies in North America.  There is a Mt Baldy in Southern California.  The main mountain at Sun Valley is also called Mt. Baldy.   So, note that this Baldy Mountain ski area is in British Columbia, located about an hour's drive east of Osoyoos, a short detour off of Highway 3 in Canada.

View of the bigger mountain as seen from the parking lot.  Where is everyone?  Not on the slopes! This was a Sunday!

There are two hills here.  The main hill offers 1,400' vertical.  Next to it is a smaller hill with just 800' vertical.  The smaller hill begs a comparison with Phoenix Mountain, which also has 800' vertical.  But while at Phoenix Mountain the uphill transportation is a T-bar, here at Baldy, there is a fixed quad with plush padded chairs.

I skied here on a wonderfully sunny bluebird day. It was Sunday.  And yet there were no crowds anywhere.  When I first arrived, I wondered if the ski area is even open, because it was so quiet here, and I couldn't see any skiers on the slopes.  Judging by the number of cars in the parking lot, there must have been at least 200 people here, but they were dispersed all over the mountain.

The bigger hill is served by an older double chair.  It was surprising to see how much terrain it serves. There is a huge field of perfectly skiable trees there. Just traverse along a road at the top, and you will be able t choose from dozens of different powder runs.  In some way, this is similar to Cy's Glades at 49 Degrees North (You know, the 7 Deadly Sins; pick your sin and ski it!)

This is only a very small sliver of the large chunk of Baldy that offers tree skiing.
 Compared to some other ski areas on this trip, such as Marmot Basin, Nakiska, and Castle Mountain, where even the groomed trails can be scary steep, at Baldy Mountain, though there are plenty of advanced, black runs, none of them seemed too scary.  The blue trails are truly blue.  Everything is on a human scale, manageable and enjoyable.



There are more skiable options here than one could cover in a single day.  The groomers are not straight clear-cuts.  Instead, they pleasantly meander through the forest.

Some of the trail names are creative, such as the trail called "Chix Dig It".



Overall, I had a good time here and would definitely like to return some day.  It's not far from the US border, if you travel north of Wenatchee along highway 97.   Several other ski areas are located not far from highway 97 including:

Apex - near Penticton
Big White - near Kelowna
Silver Star - near Vernon
... and north of Vernon, the road splits. If you go left, that goes to Sun Peaks, near Kamloops.
If you to right, that will take you to Revelstoke.

So, if you are driving in that direction, Baldy Mountain is just an hour's detour east from highway 97 as soon as you enter Canada. Give it a try.  You'll like it.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Sounds wonderful! I'd love to check it out. I really like some of the smaller ski areas we've visited better than the bigger ones. Thanks for blogging about it!

Nancy Erz