Silver Star Mountain Resort

Silver Star Mountain Resort spreads its 192 runs across four distinct faces of the mountain, Vance Creek, Attridge, Silver Woods and Putnam Creek, each with its own character rather than one continuous run of trails down a single slope. From a base at 1,146 m to a summit near 1,886 m, the resort covers a 740 m vertical drop, and the terrain leans toward cruising skiers: 45.01 km of the mountain’s 111.1 km of runs are rated intermediate, against 31.97 km of easy terrain and a smaller 25.01 km block of advanced skiing, with 7.82 km left for experts, a token 0.25 km of novice trail, and a further 1.05 km logged as ungraded “other” terrain, likely glades or connector trails that don’t fit neatly into a single difficulty band. Spread across 192 named runs, that works out to an average trail length of well under a kilometer, and with just 11 lifts serving all of them, the ratio works out to more than 17 runs per lift, typical of a mountain built around a small number of high-capacity lifts feeding a dense web of interconnecting trails rather than one lift per run.

The lift network reflects a resort built up gradually rather than all at once. Eleven lifts serve the mountain: one t-bar, five chairlifts, four magic carpets for beginner zones, and a single eight-passenger gondola, the Schumann Summit Express, which opened July 14, 2018 and carries riders to the summit in about 4.4 minutes, replacing an older route up to the alpine village. Skiing history here goes back further than the resort itself; a local resident tried the slopes as early as 1930, and the first rope tow, an 800-foot line on Burney Ridge, opened in 1946 for fifty cents a day. Real development of Silver Star as a resort began in the late 1950s: a Poma surface lift went in from the 5,000-foot level in 1959 to replace the original rope tows, and the Summit and Yellow chairlifts followed in 1967-1968, built by the manufacturer GMD Mueller. The Silver Queen chair, dating to 1990, now serves as the mountain’s bunny hill lift, while the newer Comet Express is rated to carry 2,600 passengers an hour. Ownership passed to Powdr Corporation, the Utah-based operator, on December 3, 2019.

Silver Star sits about 22 km northeast of Vernon in the Monashee Mountains, a range that catches consistent snowfall through the winter, averaging around 700 cm a season, dry enough and cold enough that the resort has never needed to run snowmaking. The season typically runs from late November into mid-April. Unlike many resorts with comparable snow totals, the base village sits at elevation rather than in a valley town, so lodging, restaurants and lift access are all within walking distance of the slopes.

Getting there means flying into Kelowna International Airport, about 51 km away and the closest major airport, or Kamloops or Penticton, both over 100 km out. Kelowna itself, with a population above 144,000, is the nearest sizeable city at just under 62 km, with Kamloops a secondary population center at 95.6 km and Chilliwack, in the Fraser Valley, a much farther third option at 247.3 km for visitors coming from the Vancouver side of the province. Silver Star carries an Ikon Pass affiliation, with the full Ikon Pass granting seven blackout-free days and the Ikon Base Pass covering five days subject to blackout dates, making it a reachable add-on for skiers already holding an Ikon product rather than a primary destination pass.