Mount Cain

Mount Cain's summit reaches 1,610 metres, dropping 420 vertical metres to a base at 1,190 metres across 21 runs spread over roughly 40 hectares on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Terrain splits 45 per cent intermediate, 30 per cent advanced, 20 per cent beginner and 5 per cent expert, with average annual snowfall of roughly 9.0 metres. Two t-bars serve the mountain, with no chairlifts or gondolas.

Mount Cain holds a genuinely distinctive place among Canadian ski areas as a volunteer-run, non-profit resort on Vancouver Island's North Island, built almost entirely through community effort rather than commercial development. Its considerable, reliable snowfall combined with a deliberately unpolished, grassroots character has built Mount Cain's reputation as an authentic alternative to the commercially operated resorts elsewhere in the province.

Forester Julius Kapitany led the search for a suitable ski hill site on Vancouver Island's North Island, and a ski club had formed by the 1970s, installing a loaner rope tow in the West Bowl. The Mount Cain Alpine Park Society was formally incorporated on 31 August 1977, with local forestry and other industries donating time, equipment and expertise to build the area's earliest infrastructure.

An access road opened in 1978, followed by a lodge in 1979, and by the late 1980s two t-bars were operating with most of the present-day runs open. The hill remains run mostly by volunteers today, many of whom work in the North Vancouver Island forest industry, as a non-profit society. Adult daily tickets run from 56 to 65 Canadian dollars.