The Banff Sunshine Village is a ski resort in the Canadian Rockies. While smaller than Lake Louise in terms of skiable terrain (3,300 acres at Sunshine vs almost 4,300 acres at Louise) it technically has a greater vertical drop of 3,510 feet (vs. 3,250 feet at Louise). The ski area has runs on Lookout Mountain, Goat’s Eye Mountain, and Mount Standish. The resort has 137 marked ski runs, and the longest run goes for 8 km. The ski area is located 16 km from the town of Banff, and requires driving up an approximately 8 km access road after turning off the TransCanada highway shortly after the Highway 1A exit. The parking area at the end of the access road is not where the skiing starts - it is necessary to take a roughly 10 minute ride up an 8 person gondola in order to reach the village itself and the ski lifts on Mount Standish and Lookout Mountain. Partway up the gondola line there is a station which provides access to Goat’s Eye Mountain.
Sunshine was my default ski resort as a teenager, and since I moved away for school I exclusively skid at Sunshine when I was back in Alberta for holidays. I am very familiar with the mountain, and had skived every run with the exception of the free ride areas of Delirium Dive and the Wild West prior to this trip. I decided that, in order to force myself to keep skiing different runs, I would use this trip as an opportunity to ski as many different runs at the resort as I could. I kept a list of the runs I skied, and highlighted them on the resort map shown below. I didn’t get to all of the black and double black runs, since some weren’t open, but I covered a lot of ground. I didn’t make it to Delirium Dive, an “in bound, backcountry” run which requires avalanche gear and a buddy to ski, but I did most other double black runs the resort had.
I ended up being able to ski at Sunshine 5 times during my sabbatical, and while some of the days didn’t always have the nicest weather the spring skiing conditions on the hill were great. The second day that I skied there the south chutes on Goat’s Eye thankfully opened up, and I was able to play in the double black gullies for most of the remainder of my trip. The snow conditions are always changing, and even in March the snow crew was opening up new runs on the top face of Goat’s Eye as conditions improved.
Some of my favourite runs at Sunshine only open in the spring, and these are the south chutes on the skier’s left hand side of Goat’s Eye. These chutes are where most of the double black diamond ski runs are at Sunshine, and when they have enough snow they are a ton of fun to ski. I was pretty excited on the last day I skied there - they had received about 15 cm of snow the previous evening and I was able to get some fresh tracks in the chutes once the avalanche control team was happy with conditions and opened the runs shortly after 11 AM. On a great day they are amazing to ski - not always fun when there are surprise rocks around but the conditions this year didn’t lead to that happening.
