West Bowl Express chairlift - Sun Peaks 2024/25 Season

The addition of the West Bowl Express chairlift was formally announced by Sun Peaks Resort in April, 2023 as the long-awaited replacement for the West Bowl T-bar. It will once again be supplied by Doppelmayr, but unlike the new Orient and Crystal chairlifts which were fixed grip quads, the new West Bowl Express will be a higher speed detachable quad and will come at a cost of around $12 million.

The West Bowl T-bar was originally installed at Sun Peaks in 1965, and was later moved to open up the beautiful West Bowl area in 1992. But after a temporary closure during the covid ski season of 2020/21, it never re-opened and was formally retired during the 2021/22 ski season when it was considered too old and expensive to continue operating.

Since then, the beautiful alpine area of Tod Mountain, which offers one of the highest elevation ski areas in Sun Peaks, was not regularly groomed and serviced and was only accessible to those willing to do a short hike.

Click to see the new 2024/25 Alpine Trail map, including the new West Bowl Express area.

The West Bowl area with powder-filled open runs as well as treed/ gladed areas has always been popular with locals but was generally under-utilized by visitors given its more remote location at the top of Mt. Tod. It has sunny, south facing slopes and generally offers great, untouched stashes of beautiful Okanagan champagne powder!

That will likely change though once the new roughly 1,600 meter long higher-speed detachable lift (5m/second and under 6 minutes to get to the top) with 1,000 vertical feet (315 vertical metres) of elevation gain begins taking guests to the highest elevation area of Sun Peaks in time for the 2024/25 ski season.  The West Bowl Express will be double the length of the previous West Bowl T-bar, with new top and bottom terminals.

While it is within the current resort boundaries and won't open up any new terrain area, it will include several new trails and will also create a nice increase in the length of the existing runs in the West Bowl area.  

However it does open up the area above the terminus of the old t-bar, and the accessible area increases from 54 acres to 169 acres thanks to the extra distance and the additional logging that was done to open up the area and increase the existing trails.

        West Bowl Express - New Ski Runs

In addition to the 115 acres of new skiable terrain from the top of the new chairlift , there will be several new runs thanks to all the hard work over the summer:

Whyte's Ride (expanded): While the upper portion of Whyte's Ride was already there, there is a great new additional blue run that takes skiers along the West Bowl ski area boundary and all the way down to the bottom terminal.

Saddle Up: A new blue run that takes skiers from the top terminal over to the Westsyde blue run.

Gateway: A new 'last-chance' blue access run that can take skiers off Round-a-Bout and down to the bottom terminal of the West Bowl Express for those who don't want to have to take the Burfield chair back up.

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As written in the related Sun Peaks News article, SPR’s chief marketing officer Aiden Kelly says the express chairlift will open up more terrain and increase access to existing terrain in Sun Peaks. The West Bowl provides a different skiing and riding experience because of its distance from the village.

“I think the thing that we’re probably most excited about is that there’s a bit of a different look and feel of in the West Bowl … you really get that sense that you’re out in the mountains away from it all,” Kelly said.

The area will provide easier access to bowl skiing, rolling groomers and technical terrain and is the third chairlift launched by the resort in the last six years.

Due to the more extreme weather conditions in the West Bowl area and the related need to remove and store the detachable chairs overnight, there will be additional time required to prepare the chair and operating hours will be reduced to 9:30 am to 3:15 pm each day.

Power to the new lift is also via an auxiliary system and will be operate even in the event of a seasonal power failure at the resort.

        West Bowl Express Chairlift Timeline

The initial design, planning and site prep for the West Bowl Express was completed in the summer of 2022, and electrical and foundation work was done during the summer of 2023. At the end of the 2023/2024 ski season, the major parts for the new Doppelmayr lift had arrived and were being accumulated and assembled in the parking area.  The resort will be flying the new towers, crossarms and sheave assemblies up to the alpine for installation starting in May, 2024 and everythiong is on track and as long as conditions in this area are favorable, will be operating at the start of the 2024/25 winter ski season.

This will be another great addition to Sun Peaks Resort and we can't wait to enjoy the new trails.

Click to view the Sun Peaks Resort West Bowl Express April 2024 update.

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