Ready to go!
Welcome to our Big White Vacation, 2024 edition! Keeping on with our spring skiing mindset, we waited until late March / early April to hit the slopes instead of the kids’ February break. As is now the norm, we arrived to Kelowna late in the evening and stayed overnight in the Sheraton across the street from the airport. The next day we went grocery shopping and got everything we needed from town, transferred everything to our shuttle at the airport (wasn’t too bad as we got the majority of our groceries delivered right to the condo fridge this year… pretty sweet) and then up to the hill we went!
We were a bit surprised to see how little snow we saw on the way up, usually by the time we reach the Big White sign off the highway there is a fair bit of the white stuff… not this year! Were we worried about conditions on the hill? Maybe a little. But, we’d make the best of it. We could see there was still a good snow base when we got up to the condo which eased the mind a bit. We settled in at the condo, sorted out our ski gear and welcomed Jenn’s family, had our traditional first-night pizza party and started on this year’s craft, a giant Lego family portrait.
Conditions were a little less snowy than we were used to when we started, but it was still a blast to be back! We enjoyed the bluebird days while we had them for sure. It took a day or so before we saw any new snow… but when it started it kept coming! Over a few days we got somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25cm, it was awesome! Everything was back to being nice and soft, life is good. One thing we missed, however, were the snow ghosts (trees caked in snow) – there ended up being lots of snow on the ground but hardly any on the trees, which are always fun to see and a staple on the Big White bingo card. Hopefully next year!
What a cool dude.
This year we made a point of ticking a few boxes we had meant to tick in holidays past. We did the Cruz the Blues (now called the ‘Moose Cruz‘) scavenger hunt over a few days, where you find a clue / letter on every blue run across the mountain to figure out a phrase to win prizes; another day we hired a photographer to take photos of us all skiing (it just so happened to be a bluebird day!). We also finally went night skiing, which was pretty wild as well – if not a little scary at times (you can only see so much skiing by floodlight)! Josh was convinced to take a few snowboarding lessons as well, he got nice and comfortable with it (though he stuck with skiing for the most part). I finally remembered to bring and wear my Oilers jersey on the hill for a day, a little change from the norm…! Oh, and not least – I skiied every day we were on the hill (like 12 in a row I believe), a first for any of us I think!
We were there over Easter as well, so of course an easter egg hunt was in order. The younger kids actually got a few hunts in as we did one in the condo, plus there was also one outside at the Kids Center, lucky ducks! Ryley and Ruby were especially helpful with their cousins Denver and Madi, making sure everyone got some goodies! Of course auntie Jenn made sure there were lots of treats for all (maybe too many)…! I think we eventually got through them all. 😉
I mentioned last year that we had bought a piece of property on the hill in an area called Feathertop, but didn’t have plans to build yet. We decided to start the process this year, beginning with a few interviews of some contractors with experience on the hill while we were there, plus I met with a future neighbor on the Feathertop Strata to get the low down on the who’s who up there in terms of good vs. not-so-good builders. We have a good feeling about the few we had met and will likely move to choose a contractor in the coming months and move the process forward. Stay tuned, exciting times ahead!
That about sums it up for another year, already looking forward to BW2025!
