Big White Mountain

July 27, 2026

2315m

Kelowna, BC

Big White Mtn. boasts a ski resort about an hour east of Kelowna in the Monashees and itself also boasts over 1000 m prominence to be an “interesting” objective from peakbagging perspective. It offers no mountaineering interest though, as the “ascent” is nothing fancier than a walk-up. One can cheat by taking the chairlifts in either winter (ski) or summer (bike) but it’s not a long hike anyhow. The peak can be done in about 2 hours round trip from the village. The access road is also paved the entire way so this is honestly a no-brainer objective.

I decided at the last minute to make the drive homewards a little bit longer than planned. Instead of going directly home from the Rockies I opted to divert south towards Kelowna. I had the entire day to go home from Revelstoke and I did not need to rush. To my surprise the wildfire smokes actually cleared up as I drove southwards down the Okanagan Valley and it was going to be a gorgeous day in the Monashees. I got to the Big White village in the early afternoon. It was quite deserted in summer. The parking wasn’t obvious but I found a pull-out to make do.

I had downloaded a recent GPX track from peakbagger.com and the route sounded reasonable. There were literally a ton of trails to choose from and I would quickly get confused. The GPX track stayed mostly on a good trail until about 2/3 of the way up, and then I lost the trail in the open country. At this point it was pointless to follow a route or some sort as the summit was “right there”. I simply ascended the grassy slopes of the open ski runs and joined the trail near the very summit that came up from a different direction. The trail I was following lower down had too many up-and-downs than I liked, so plodding up the open runs might not be a bad idea after all.

The start of the route was in the ski village

The view to the south was still somewhat obscured by the smokes

Rhonda Lake to the east. Mt. Tanner etc. on the skyline

There are two contenders and I tagged both just to be sure, and then descended. I aimed more or less directly down towards the village, utilizing trails and/or open ski runs. The trails gave way to some downhill biking trails that were not meant for hiking. Fortunately there weren’t many bikers on this day. I completed the round trip in just over 2 hours and then drove down to Kelowna for one last objective before driving home.