The first snow of the season fell at SilverStar Mountain Resort overnight and into the morning of Friday, Sept. 29 (photo courtesy of Doug Chimuk)

By Liam Verster

First snow of season

First dusting of snow falls at SilverStar

Sep 29, 2023 | 12:00 PM

SilverStar Mountain Resort has received its first snow of the season.

The ski resort outside Vernon received a dusting of snow overnight and into the morning of Friday, Sept. 29, the first of the year to actually stick to the ground.

“It’s really exciting to come up and see the mountain turn white and it gets everyone really excited for the winter,” Doug Chimuk, marketing manager at SilverStar, told Vernon Matters, adding this time of year is typical for seeing the first real snow up the hill.

“We see snow sometimes a bit earlier than this but generally this is about the time we start to see snow stick. It will freeze and then melt away and then we’ll probably start to see some snow that actually sticks around more permanently in the coming weeks.”

Dusting of snow at SilverStar on Friday, Sept. 29 (Photo credit: Doug Chimuk/SilverStar)

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With the snow now actually starting to fall up the slopes, the crews at SilverStar are working to make sure everything is prepared for the ski season.

“Our operations teams are working really hard to get the mountain ready for the snow. I know they are hoping to probably get a little more work on the mountain before they have to transition to snowmobiles,” Chimuk said, adding new features are being added to the operations to improve visitor’s experiences.

“We’re expanding our parking, we’ve got more upload capacity planned for the gondola where we’re doubling our upload capacity with twice as many cabins going on. We’ve got two new groomers being added to the fleet so we can groom more terrain and improve that mountain experience for the guests.”

The 2022-23 season saw the resort open its runs early and close later than usual due to the great snow base, but Chimuk could not comment on if the forecast would show a similar extended ski season this year, though he remained hopeful for lots of early snow.

SilverStar’s tentative Nordic opening is on Nov. 24, 2023 with the alpine opening planned for Nov. 30.

The resort’s Early Bird sale on winter passes ends at midnight Saturday, Sept. 30.