Whitewater Facilities
The day lodge at
Whitewater Ski Resort houses most of the services and amenities. These include guest services, lockers, ticket sales, the mountain learning centre, café, bar and the WH2O shop.
Whitewater Ski Rentals & Snowboard Rental
The Whitewater rental and repair shop has a range of alpine skis, telemark skis and snowboards. This includes standard and high performance equipment. They also rent out clothing, helmets, and backcountry and avalanche safety equipment.
The standard performance gear rentals are inexpensive relative to other Western Canadian ski resorts.
Nelson Ski Rentals
Nelson has several ski and snowboard shops, but these largely focus on retail not rentals.
ROAM rents out demo skis, boots and avalanche gear for those in the market to buy. The Sacred Ride (213B Baker St, Nelson) rents out a limited range of skis, snowboards, boots, split boards, skins and avalanche safety gear. Gericks (702 Baker Street, Nelson) has cross-country ski rentals.
Facilities for Children
Child care is no longer provided at Whitewater ski resort. Instead there is a play room where parents can take the little kids.
Whitewater Ski School
The learning centre provides lessons for snowboarding and alpine and telemark skiing. Whitewater offers great value packages for beginners, and other group lessons are reasonably inexpensive too. Group ski and snowboard lessons start from age 6, whilst private lessons are available for 3-6 year olds.
For advanced riders (16+) the ski school offers a Powderhound Experience program to get you prepped for a day of cat skiing or heli skiing.
Whitewater also has irregular programs for avalanche skills training and level 1 instructor courses.
Eating On Mountain
So good is the food at Whitewater BC that the cooks have published recipe books which have become a coveted must-have accessory for the kitchen.
Located upstairs in the day lodge is the Fresh Tracks Café, which is not your average ski resort cafeteria. Some of the fare is traditional cafeteria food, but they also have lots of healthy yummies such as samosas, homemade soups, and an array of freshly baked goods.
The Freshies coffee bar has local organic coffee, salads and rolls, and they actually know how to make a coffee (which is a bit of a rarity in North America!). Here, I had one of the best muffins I’ve ever put my taste buds to (big call I know!).
The seating area for the café and coffee bar seems to welcome brown baggers, which is a bit of a problem because people leave their bags absolutely everywhere and it feels really crowded even when it’s not. Downstairs is a mini coffee shop and the official brown baggers area that doesn’t seem well frequented.
Coal Oil Johnny’s Pub is in an area off to the side of the upstairs café. They provide table service for lunch, après appetizers and cold beers. The deck is a great place to perch in the sunshine and pretend to watch the kids playing outside.
There is also a Fresh Tracks Express Café near the base of the Glory Ridge chair, so you don’t have to return to the day lodge to get fuelled up.