Discovering Apex Mountain Resort’s steep slopes, quick access and general lack of lift lines.
words :: Feet Banks
“I guess my first memory of skiing Apex is more remembering the first rule,” says Ty Spence. “Our family would go in the pub for lunch (it’s the 1980s so all the parents would go in there), and the rule was if I saw a policeman walk in, I had to hide under a table.”
The pub was the Gunbarrel Saloon, one of the most celebrated ski-hill bars in BC history. Ty’s father, Glen, was one of the original Gunbarrel founders. He opened the saloon in 1981, a full 20 years after a community fundraiser installed the first Poma lift on Beaconsfield Mountain (a 35-minute drive southwest of Penticton) and Apex Alpine officially opened.
With $3 day tickets ($2 for kids), a vertical rise of 370 metres (1,200 feet) and the summit sitting at 2,178 metres (7,146 feet), by 1962 Apex was touted as having “some of the finest snow conditions and alpine skiing to be found anywhere” in an article in the Spokane Spokesman review.
As interest grew, Apex put in their first T-bar in 1968 and a double chair in 1971. A better access road went in ’79 with big development plans on the horizon, including the Stock’s triple chairlift set to open in 1981.
“We had a camper, so we’d drive up from North Vancouver to ski there,” Glen Spence says. “There were a bunch of cabins there already, but in 1979 we heard about a land auction so we drove up and got a lot. Ten grand for a lot at a ski hill is a pretty good deal, even back then.”
After building a cabin over the summer, Glen, his brother Brian and another friend recognized the need for a proper après spot at their new winter home. When they heard resort management was looking for proposals to lease space and start a bar, Glen and his team went all in.
“We invited one of the owners to a house party,” he says. “Maybe that helped our proposal a bit, but between the three of us we had zero knowledge of the industry—we’d never even washed a dish—so we learned by making mistakes. Everyone up there was young and partying in those days and it’s a ski-hill bar—it became a party place right off the bat.”
“…between the three of us we had zero knowledge of the industry—we’d never even washed a dish—so we learned by making mistakes.”
Located a bit up-slope from the newly constructed main base lodge (and thus more insulated from police visits), the original Gunbarrel had swinging saloon doors (more than a few local hotdoggers carried enough momentum to blast right through the doors onto the Gunbarrel dancefloor) and a dedicated hot tub building right next door.
“I lived above the Gunbarrel,” says Canadian ski-mountaineering icon Eric Pehota. “That place was our living room.”
Fresh out of high school, Pehota moved to Apex in 1982 hoping for a job that would allow him to ski every day. “It was snowing hard on the drive up for my job interview,” he says. “I had to pull over and fill my truck up with rocks then drive up the hill in reverse. Got the job, though—a liftie.”
During the first week of work, Pehota met a young ski technician named Trevor Petersen and forged a friendship that would eventually lead the duo to Whistler and a new approach to big-mountain skiing in Canada.
Pehota and Petersen would ski every day on their lunch breaks. “As the season went on, our lunch hours got longer and longer,” Eric says. “Eventually we got fired but they let us keep our passes. That was amazing. I guess it was getting into spring and things were slowing down anyhow.”
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These days, Apex has expanded lift capacity to include a high-speed quad chair that gives access to their 79 named runs. Slightly separated from the BC coast and the big winter storms that ravage it, Apex snowfall average charts in about six metres (20 feet). But what the mountain is best known for—what separates it from almost every small- and medium-sized ski hill in the province—is that it’s steep, with perfect straight-shot fall-line runs and fast, rolling cruisers. “I learned about stretching out the groin there,” Eric says, “because one leg is gonna be up around your ear. It was steeper than anything I’d grown up with.”
Steep slopes and consistent temperatures also make for fast skiers. “I’d be with my daughter at all the interior BC races and see Apex kids on the podium,” says Michael Ziff. An Apex kids ski coach who learned to race in Quebec, Ziff spent a few years shredding Whistler before eventually ending up in Penticton in 2020. “They were the smallest team of the field, but they were skiing really well.”
Ziff points out that the Apex T-Bar is directly adjacent to the race-training course. “The kids can probably get 3 to 4 laps on the course in the time it takes a racer at a larger, busier resort to get one lap, wait in a lift line, then ski back over to the course.”
Racers aren’t the only ones taking advantage of Apex’s steep slopes, quick access and general lack of lift lines. “I first showed up there in 1999 for some mogul-skiing madness,” says Josh Dueck, “and I moved there from Whistler right away. I fell in love with it. That’s where I wanted to coach and spend my time. The small-hill vibe, the Gunbarrel. There’s just a real ski culture there and Wade Garrod kickstarted a great freestyle program.”
Skiing out of Kimberley, BC, as a kid, Josh competed in freestyle as a youth and got his first head-coaching job at Apex in 2002. After a 2004 ski accident at SilverStar in Vernon, BC, left him paralyzed below the waist, Josh hopped in a sit ski and kept on givin’ er, tenaciously giving back to the sport, advocating for accessibility and collecting hardware—two X Games medals and three from the Paralympics, including a gold and silver at Sochi in 2014. He’s also that guy you likely saw on the internet (on the Ellen DeGeneres Show) in 2012 after he became the first sit-ski athlete to land a backflip on snow.
Fast, empty cruisers, steep glades, a couple nice cat tracks to launch off—the kind of day, and ski hill, that blows away expectations.
Skiing with ex-pros like Josh and Ty (who competed in freestyle, halfpipe and big air) or founders like Glen is a treat on any hill, so when Mountain Life co-publisher Jon Burak and I checked into our hotel in Penticton we had no idea what Apex held for us. Michael Ziff called to say, “I’ll meet you up there.”
“Where do you want to meet? What time?” I asked.
Ziff laughed. “It’s a Wednesday. I’ll just meet you on the hill.”
Which is exactly what happened, because with blue skies and no fresh snow, a Wednesday at Apex meant absolutely no lift lines. We didn’t quite have the hill to ourselves, but it definitely felt like it. Fast, empty cruisers, steep glades, a couple nice cat tracks to launch off—the kind of day, and ski hill, that blows away expectations. Après at the new version of Gunbarrel still has a vibe.
“My dad sold the Gunbarrel the year I turned eighteen,” Ty says. “Convenient for him, but I still acted like I owned it for a while at least.”
Apex has had a number of owners over the decades, but the tight-knit ski-community vibe remains strong amongst the locals and winter residents. A couple years back all the Apex hotel rooms were sold as private residences (there are options to stay in-resort but it’s all privately run), so it’s back to Penticton for a lakeside dinner while Dueck regales us with stories of his years at Apex, why he still loves the T-tar and how, after his accident, Apex was the place he chose to first try sit skiing and rekindle his role in the sport. “I was with Mike Coburn from S.O.A.R. [Swift Outdoor Accessible Recreation] and my freestyle buddy Brian Jansen,” he says. “It wasn’t easy and it was an emotional day, but Apex did give us early season access to the hill and a snowmobile for hot laps. So that was awesome.”
A beach community on the southern end of Okanagan Lake, Penticton is an unlikely ski town, better known for the Okanagan/Naramata wine scene and a host of summer events and festivals. “A lot of people ended up here after fleeing the city during COVID,” Ziff tells us over double tequila Palomita cocktails at a hole-in-the-wall tapas spot that offers an alternative to Penticton’s well-established craft brewery scene. “The town feels unified and whole because it’s not split by a highway like so many other places,” Ziff says. “And I love the seasons here—hot summer, cold winter. The snow is the same on the top of the ski hill as the bottom. Plus, it’s only 35 minutes from town, which is mellow when I think about weekend traffic in Whistler.”
We don’t see any of that fresh snow for day two, but Apex remains devoid of crowds and Glen, Ty and Josh continue to deliver highly shred-able ski lines and classic local tales. “Gary Denton got his pass clipped two years ago for ducking ropes and poaching lines,” Glen says. “Gary Denton is 75 years old.”
“Gary Denton got his pass clipped two years ago for ducking ropes and poaching lines. Gary Denton is 75 years old.”
With over four decades at Apex in his own rearview mirror, Glen’s favourite run is still directly below the quad chair. “That’s my favourite, too,” Josh says. “Where else can you unload the chair and drop right into your run, no traverse? And there are a few attractive features in there you can eyeball on the ride up to scare yourself a bit. Top to bottom, hootin’ and hollerin’…It’s the best.”
“That’s actually the other rule,” Ty says. “The only other rule I remember—if you get one of the first chairs after a pow day, it’s your duty to automatically ski right under the chair. Just a mad dash, choking on snow and making noise the whole way down to psych up everyone else on the mountain.”
Rules like that are what real ski culture is made of. And so are communities like Apex.
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