We have been really lucky with the weather recently and the conditions at the mountain are fantastic!

Several groups of night skiers skied our Black Diamonds runs last night.

While doing avalanche control early this morning, we noticed some avalanche activity from these night skiers.

We would like to take this as an opportunity to remind our Uphill Community about our Uphill Policy and the rules involved.

During Non-Operating Days

• No access from 12:00am to 8:30am
• Users must have an uphill pass, addon, or have purchased a single day uphill ticket
• Use the Red Route shown on the map, following the lift line up to Rainbow Ridge
• Headlamps are required outside of daylight hours
• No access to the Black Diamonds (AOT, Hangover, Junior’s Jungle, Galloways and Terminator). Returning to the hill from the backcountry using lower Terminator is permitted
• Users are subject to the exclusion of liability and assumption of risk
• Dogs must have a Doggy Pass and be kept on leash until lift tower 3. Please clean up after your dog

During Lift-Operating Days

• No access from 12:00am to 9:30am
• Users must have an uphill pass or have purchased a single day uphill ticket
• Use the Green Route shown on the map, following the Boundary Trail all the way up. The Red Route can be used in the evening after ski patrol is done sweeping the hill for the day
• Stay to the side of the uphill route
• No dogs allowed

Clarification about why the black diamond runs are closed during non lift operating days, from the Shames-uphill-survey-responses-and-clarification document we made and reviewed with the uphill committee (shared September 2023):

• A couple years ago, with the help of local avalanche professionals, we created an avalanche safety plan (ASP) and avalanche control procedures as is required by Worksafe BC.
• Having significant avalanche activity in our black diamond runs over the years, we simply can not allow access to the public when our ski patrol team is not there to implement our ASP.
• Based on the survey feedback, there appears to be some confusion about the ability to ski out of Terminator for users coming out of the backcountry. Please note, this ski out is not restricted, and the map was updated partway through last season

We’d like to invite everyone to review our uphill policy, and help us communicate it to the community. We MUST work on this all together if we want the privilege of uphill use at Shames Mountain to continue!

If this continues, we will have to enforce the closure by having someone policing the uphill use, it is better for everyone if we don’t get there.

Thanks for reading

Robin Cecioni
Outside Operations Manager