It was a banner year for SilverStar Mountain Resort.
This week, the popular resort near Vernon closed for the winter season, with last Sunday as the last day skiers and snowboarders could zip down its runs.
“It was a fantastic season. Mother Nature brought in a lot of snow this year — 7.6 metres (24.9 feet) fell over the course of the season, a great amount of snow,” said Ian Jenkins, the resort’s director of sales and marketing.
“We opened early, we stayed open late. You can’t ask for much more when it comes to a ski season than that.”
Normally, SilverStar closes after the first weekend of April, around the 8th or so, but conditions this year allowed one week extra of skiing and snowboarding.
Coupled with an early opening, the resort had 155 days of operations.
“We saw events come back in a flurry,” said Jenkins. “For us, we get a lot of Australian guests, and they were free to travel and come over and so, we saw a lot of our international guests come over and join us again.
“So, all in all, it was nice to have the shackles off and have a normal running season and it proved very successful.”
Jenkins says even with the extra week, shutting down the winter season was a frustrating decision given the amount of snow still on the mountain.
The resort will now begin prepping for its summer season opening, scheduled for June 23.