Canada Ski Tour Travel
Canada travel isn’t easy. There are lots of options for travelling around Canadian ski resorts. Here are the ways we did it.
Planes
We flew to Kelowna from Vancouver and worked our way from there. Others we met flew to Spokane to go to Red Mountain. It would depend what resort you are starting with but Kelowna is a good base for many. Kelowna has a decent airport to get to from Vancouver or Calgary and has shuttles to all the nearby resorts. Kelowna is a great town, especially if you need to buy any ski/snowboard equipment.
Buses
Our initial plan was to bus it around the ski resorts but this was actually pretty difficult. We managed to get a lift up to Big White by joining the Big White Facebook group. Kelowna airport has a shuttle (these are fairly regular and are available from Kelowna airport to the nearby resorts). Ski Shuttles can be booked online. http://www.bigwhite.com/plan-your-trip/get-big-white/ground-transportation/airport-shuttlegreyhound-bus-station-shuttle
To get to Red Mountain we returned to Kelowna, we took a Greyhound bus to Castlegar. From there we got a connection to Trail (the town beside Rossland). Unfortunately there are not many buses up there. Taxis also apparently won’t go up the hill due to snow and steepness, and as a result David the Hostel manager kindly came down to pick us up, not sure how we would have got up without him. Carting our ski bags between all these connections and accommodations was a nightmare! Busing ski gear about is hard, we wouldn’t recommend it.
From Rossland we got BC transport buses (it took two) to get to Nelson and Whitewater, it was here after having carted the bags on a bus mobbed full of students that we decided to buy a car.
Car
Our first plan was to rent a car. No rental cars had winter tyres and prices were extortionate and as a result we decided to buy one. Buying a car was easier than we had expected. We found our car (who we called Nelson) on Craigslist.
In BC you will need to pay for insurance + tax (each time the car is sold the BC government takes tax) this came to around £400 for us, we hadn’t realised that had you to pay tax on top of the purchase price. To exchange the money and details you will need to go to an insurance office and there they organise the documents and give you license plates (in BC you keep the plates and put them on your next car). It took around 45 minutes to complete it all and we had ourselves a car.
We bought a 2005 Nissan X-Trail 2.5L 4×4 and were lucky enough to have a car that gave us no problems. Fuel in Canada is ridiculous cheap in comparison to the UK. It cost us $40 for a full tank of fuel, around about £20 at the time, nuts. The roads were actually all fantastic when we were there but I’m sure they can be a lot more challenging in bad weather. Would definitely recommend buying a car and we saw a lot more through doing so.
Canada travel isn’t easy. There are lots of options for travelling around Canadian ski resorts. Here are the ways we did it.
Planes
We flew to Kelowna from Vancouver and worked our way from there. Others we met flew to Spokane to go to Red Mountain. It would depend what resort you are starting with but Kelowna is a good base for many. Kelowna has a decent airport to get to from Vancouver or Calgary and has shuttles to all the nearby resorts. Kelowna is a great town, especially if you need to buy any ski/snowboard equipment.
Buses
Our initial plan was to bus it around the ski resorts but this was actually pretty difficult. We managed to get a lift up to Big White by joining the Big White Facebook group. Kelowna airport has a shuttle (these are fairly regular and are available from Kelowna airport to the nearby resorts). Ski Shuttles can be booked online. http://www.bigwhite.com/plan-your-trip/get-big-white/ground-transportation/airport-shuttlegreyhound-bus-station-shuttle
To get to Red Mountain we returned to Kelowna, we took a Greyhound bus to Castlegar. From there we got a connection to Trail (the town beside Rossland). Unfortunately there are not many buses up there. Taxis also apparently won’t go up the hill due to snow and steepness, and as a result David the Hostel manager kindly came down to pick us up, not sure how we would have got up without him. Carting our ski bags between all these connections and accommodations was a nightmare! Busing ski gear about is hard, we wouldn’t recommend it.
From Rossland we got BC transport buses (it took two) to get to Nelson and Whitewater, it was here after having carted the bags on a bus mobbed full of students that we decided to buy a car.
Car
Our first plan was to rent a car. No rental cars had winter tyres and prices were extortionate and as a result we decided to buy one. Buying a car was easier than we had expected. We found our car (who we called Nelson) on Craigslist.
In BC you will need to pay for insurance + tax (each time the car is sold the BC government takes tax) this came to around £400 for us, we hadn’t realised that had you to pay tax on top of the purchase price. To exchange the money and details you will need to go to an insurance office and there they organise the documents and give you license plates (in BC you keep the plates and put them on your next car). It took around 45 minutes to complete it all and we had ourselves a car.
We bought a 2005 Nissan X-Trail 2.5L 4×4 and were lucky enough to have a car that gave us no problems. Fuel in Canada is ridiculous cheap in comparison to the UK. It cost us $40 for a full tank of fuel, around about £20 at the time, nuts. The roads were actually all fantastic when we were there but I’m sure they can be a lot more challenging in bad weather. Would definitely recommend buying a car and we saw a lot more through doing so.
