From Sidecountry to Patrolled Terrain
The Short Side has historically sat outside the ski area boundary. It is close to two lifts, so sidecountry skiers regularly ducked ropes to reach untouched snow and heavily wooded terrain. Because it was out of bounds, it was unmapped, ungroomed and unpatrolled, and anyone who got into trouble there, whether from an avalanche, a crash or another hazard, had no organised help on hand.
Bringing the zone inbounds changes that. It was already an area with a lot of traffic, and skiers who want its glades and powder can now ski it with mapping and patrol coverage. The new runs also improve movement across the trail network, letting skiers and snowboarders travel from Buckshot to the Shrine and back to the Backside Ski Way.
A Month in the Trees
Opening up the Short Side took a coordinated effort over the summer. Whitewater brought in F2 Logging, a professional forestry company, whose crews spent a month working across the zone. They cleared about 123 acres (roughly 50 hectares) of tightly packed trees to make the forest navigable for everyday resort skiers.
Raven Chair and Goat's Slide
The expansion follows several years of terrain growth. Whitewater replaced the Raven chairlift with a four-seater positioned higher on the mountain, which opened in 2023 and made two terrain expansions possible. One of them was Goat's Slide, a 60-acre (about 24-hectare) zone of open, south-facing alpine bowl skiing that leads into the resort's Ymir Bowl.
Rock, Snowpack and Avalanche Work
A specialised spider excavator spent about two weeks reworking rock on Bonanza. The run can now be groomed with around 100 centimetres of snow, down from the 120 to 150 centimetres it needed before.
Elsewhere, an excavator built a bootpack area on Upper Powder Keg, which helps with avalanche mitigation and makes the route to Cache Basin easier. Trail crews cleared Tailings, the area between Bonanza and Paydirt, along with Monkey Trees, and spent the summer brushing, limbing and glading spots across the rest of the resort.
Lifts, Base Area and Operating Hours
The lift maintenance team completed rope inspections, carrier work and line work across the resort. It also replaced a bearing on the Glory chairlift to extend its working life and improved the offload ramp, which should make access to the terrain beyond it easier.
The base area gets new bathrooms and extended generator coverage, and season passholders pick up new benefits, including buddy ticket discounts.
Whitewater is also shifting its lift hours by 30 minutes when daylight saving time ends in British Columbia. Most lifts will start turning at 9:30 am, with Glory opening at 9:45 am when conditions permit. Closing times will likely move by the same half hour.
