We arrived in Kelowna on the Greyhound, in temperatures that freeze your face and leech moisture from your lungs. We were glad of the warm welcome and hot coffee at the Samesun hostel where we picked up the mountain shuttle with the regular backpacking company from Germany, Australia and Israel. Halfway to Big White we spotted a lynx by the roadside – a very rare treat!

Big White is one of Vancouver’s closest resorts after the fabulous but pricey Whistler. There’s decent skiing November – April on Vancouver’s icy local mountains (Cypress, Grouse and Seymour) but the famous ‘champagne powder’ of the interior is a luxury many indulge in each year. As a novice snowboarder, I was dying to see if I could ride Big White pain-free! It was staggeringly cold, but I’d been snowboarding in the rain for the last two weeks, and the dry snow smelled fabulous.

The Boyfriend and I settled into our private, bright yellow room at the Samesun lodge, piled our Christmas presents in the corner for the morning and hit Snowshoe Sam’s for the Christmas Eve party.

Bleary-eyed on the ski lift Christmas morning, we peered curiously at the resort’s famous ‘snow ghosts’ (flash-frozen trees in weird cloud-like shapes) and wondered if we could really cut it with the seasoned skiers around us. We need not have worried. Big White has a huge variety of green runs that slide straight into the fully ski-in, ski-out village, and you can start and finish your run with the more experienced members of your group, just taking different routes. There are 118 runs in total and plenty of queue-free lifts, even at Christmas. A free gondola runs from the lower village to the upper, main village, so you can happily ski around town without a lift pass before you make it to the ticket office too.

After a crisp and sunny morning dumping myself into powdery drifts (luxury indeed!), we slid down to a mouth-watering dinner of venison and goose with plenty of BC cranberries and some good local wine. I loved the whole ‘ski to the pub’ novelty, and we had to do several turns on the ski-pub-gondola-ski-pub circuit till we had our fill!

I’m no ski resort veteran, but Big White struck me as unpretentious, good value and suitable for all kinds of skiers and riders, particularly families. It has a huge tubing park, several ice rinks, relatively cheap snowmobiling: plenty for even a non-skier to do for a few days. One thing it lacks next to Whistler is a certain cool, but the beautiful quality of the Okanagan snow easily makes up for that in the daytime.

When you’re looking at Whistler, look as well to the Okanagan region. You’ll progress further, feel braver and try more than you have anywhere else. In champagne powder, you’re invincible!