Not Wearing a Mask is More Serious Than Skiing Out-of-Bounds | Big White Ski Resort, BC Pulling Passes if You Don’t Comply

Big White Ski Resort, Canada’s favorite family resort, is taking new health orders seriously. Very seriously. The resort in British Columbia, which opened last week, revealed that they pulled the passes of three individuals who refused to wear masks at the resort on Saturday.

Pass holders refusing to wear masks will initially lose their pass for a week. For a second offense they’ll lose skiing privileges for a month, and so on.

“It’s just like when you break the alpine responsibility code, you ski out of bounds… everyone is trying to keep everybody else safe, and this is as serious as skiing out of bounds, if not more so.”

– Michael Ballingall, senior vice president of Big White Ski Resort

A couple of days before, on Thursday, November 19, the province issued health guidelines requiring the mandatory use of masks in all public spaces. A measure they had previously avoided throughout the pandemic.

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It appears that the majority of patrons are complying with the new health guideline.

“(We had a) good response, I would say about 95 percent of people complied with wearing your mask in line. We had a few anti-maskers. It’s pretty simple, if they don’t wear their mask, we pull their pass. Once we told them they lose their skiing privileges, the argument stopped pretty quick.”

– Michael Ballingall

Big White Ski Resort has had 49″ of snow so far this season, and has an alpine base of 43″.

Big White Ski Resort, or simply Big White, is a ski resort located 35-miles southeast of Kelowna in the Southern Interior of British Columbia. Located on Big White Mountain, the highest summit in the Okanagan Highland, an upland area between the Monashee Mountains and the Okanagan Valley, it is the third-largest resort in British Columbia, after Whistler-Blackcomb and Sun Peaks.

The mountain summit is at 7,608 ft with a vertical drop of 2,549 ft, serviced by 16 lifts. The mountain receives 295″ of annual snowfall. It has 2,765 acres of overall skiable terrain. With 38 acres of night skiing, Big White has western Canada’s largest resort night skiing area. It has a central village classified as a designated place by Statistics Canada, which comprises accommodation, eateries, bars, and shops. The village is 5,758 ft above sea level.