Arriving at Sun Peaks village from the valley is like going through the back of the wardrobe and discovering the wintry wonderland of Narnia. The airport city of Kamloops can often be snow-free due to a desert-like climate so the snowy contrast at 1255m (4117ft) elevation is startling. Sun Peaks is all snow in winter, from the ski-through Main Street that is machine-groomed daily to the stunning swathe of ski slopes covering 4270 acres of tantalizing terrain. Wandering around the postcard-picturesque village, transports visitors yet again – this time straight to the Alps.

Designed with a Tyrolean motif, the buildings have shutters, wooden carved balconies, murals, terracotta roof tiles (in winter hidden by oodles of snow), and the prettiest clock tower standing sentry over the sparkling ski slopes. The architectural colour scheme is pastel blue, cream, beige, pale eggshell teal and terracotta. There’s a German-run hotel, the Sun Peaks Lodge, where staff are mostly European, too. And, with the three mountains forming a horseshoe of high-altitude hedonism around the village, everything is right on the slopes reminiscent of the Arlberg in Austria or Alta Badia in Italy.

Designer, Paul Mathews made sure no-one has to clomp around on slippery steps or stairs in ski boots when he created the Sun Peaks’ master plan 25 years ago. This is a rarity at ski resorts, which typically have stairways accessing amenities. All the main services are streamlined for customer comfort with daylodges, ticket offices, rentals and shops all ski-in/out.

There’s a ski in/out elementary school at the top of the beginner platter and magic carpet lifts which also access the tube park. The health centre is right by a heated, covered chairlift. The Burfield area – with its new hostel and gradually developing restaurant vibe – is slightly further from the centre but it’s linked by lift during the daytime and a free shuttle bus into the evening.

During a ski day, the mid-mountain Sunburst Eatery + Bar is a handy stop-off for hot-ticket items like straight-out-of-the-oven cinnamon buns, liquid lunches, and customized coffees. There’s another mountain munch-ery, the circular Umbrella Café, midway on the ski over to Morrisey Mountain. For tune-ups or ski or snowboard demos, ski right to Jardines or Elevation in the Main Street and drop in for lunch at a wide variety of slopeside cafés and restaurants including upscale – and mouthwatering – Mantles at Sun Peaks Grand. Need another layer? Ski back to liftside lodges, hotels, or ski in/out condos. Time for après? Take the Gentle Giant run to the cosy, casual and charismatic Cahilty Creek Kitchen for Happy Hour snacks and drinks of the day.

The village is peppered with pretty ski/walking routes, winding through fairytale forested trails and groomed daily by resort workers. They’re useful in the evening, too, for wandering to the atmospheric après, past cute condos where the happy hoots of hot tub hilarity add to the ambiance. Watch out though: some lanes have been made wide enough for horse-drawn carriages which ply the powdery paths on guided tours early evening. Quite startling to turn a corner and come face to face with a pair of burly draft horses!

What is singular about Sun Peaks is the fluid blend of tourists, longer-term visitors, staff, second homeowners and year-round residents all volubly sharing the same wintersports’ passion. Aussies, who initially discovered the resort by spending gap years there or visiting their kids working there, return year after year, often renting condos for several months during the ski season. Australia Day in January is a major festival, with scantily-clad, flag-toting skiers and snowboarders assembling mid-mountain for a ceremonial ski down followed by much jollity in the bars and patio barbecues.

Many semi-retired and retired Canadians live in Sun Peaks full-time or split their lives between the coast and mountains, spending chunks of time recreating on snow and volunteering thousands of hours to community projects. Valley dwellers come up to play at weekends, others have a foothold in the Sun Peaks property market, alternating quality time in the resort themselves with renting out their hillside homes at peak periods. Many people have migrated here in search of their dream lifestyle and some arrived as digital nomads, able to work remotely, to become the ultimate digital sno-mads. Over the past ten years, families have been increasingly lured by the on-mountain school and the energetic outdoor ethos. Alongside the resort, Sun Peaks is also a municipality with its own Mayor presiding over a slowly growing, vibrant community of 900 or so fulltimers, which helps maintain the four-season mountainsports mojo.

Resort guests – as tourists are called by locals – fly in to Kamloops Airport from all over the world to get to Sun Peaks – both for snowsports in winter and for biking and hiking holidays in summer. A considerable cohort drives in from Vancouver, the Lower Mainland, the Seattle area, and Alberta. Despite the international allure, there is low crowd density on the Sun Peaks slopes. With large metropolitan areas too far afield for day trips, the vast majority of visitors are overnighters staying at least a weekend and, with only so many beds, there’s a natural limit to skiers on the slopes. Result: more snow per person at Canada’s second largest ski resort.

In many ski areas, winter seasonaires and locals can often have a very different experience compared to holidaymakers or weekend visitors. But at Sun Peaks, everyone frequents the same fabulous facilities – although maybe not with quite the same intensity. Locals can’t go out to dinner or indulge in après with abandon every night, for example, but there are lots of venues with a crossover allure. The Monday crowd at Masa’s quiz night is a visitor/local mix, everyone is attracted to Bottoms Bar for Wine Wednesdays (half price bottles), and the Morrisey’s Open Mic on Thursdays draws a multi-cultural, generation-spanning audience. Events throughout the season draw residents as well as visitors – for example, the Friday Race Series, the annual TELUS Nancy Greene Classic (a fun Skier/Boarder cross competition), regular Demo Days, the Wine & Food Festival, and many more.

Holidaymakers can ski for free every day with the Sun Peaks’ Hosts – all of whom are volunteers full of enthusiasm and local knowledge about the resort and lifestyle. This is a great way for skiers of all standards to feel at home right away in the resort, learning to negotiate the piste map without mishaps. Joining the First Tracks program, for perfectly manicured groomers or first dibs in overnight powder, is another way to meet skiers who know every nook and secret stash. Joining in the Fondue Evening with Torchlight Descent, skiers are guided by Sun Peaks’ residents down the smooth home run after a sumptuous fondue feast. Highlights of this bucket-list adventure are the three-course fondue fantasia (including cheese, meats, fish, seafood and chocolate), the chance to mingle with other guests as well as locals, and the shared experience of the serenely quiet and surreal ski down in the dark. For fervent fondue fanatics, the brand new Fondue Stube on Main Street is also a must-do – the tasting menu is highly recommended. Combine it with an evening snowshoe excursion in order to burn and earn the gastronomic guzzling.

Another one-off at Sun Peaks is the possibility of skiing with Canada’s foremost female Olympic and World Cup medallist. Nancy Greene Raine, married to Al Raine who is Sun Peaks’ Mayor, ski guides resort guests for free almost every afternoon, offering tips, stories and resort recommendations. And there are other opportunities to ski with inspirational pros. A bespoke ski holiday with Ski Adventures includes personalized small-group ski tuition as well as other customizable elements. Or how about hangout with heli-ski guru Bodie Shandro? He’ll teach you backcountry skills as well as persuade you to return in the summer for paddleboarding on nearby Heffley Lake. If you’re coming from Australia, you might book with Snowlife Tours and have the advantage of Tennille and Darren Southcombe’s insider knowledge, expert guiding, and jolly joie de vivre Sydney-style.

Most businesses are hands-on in Sun Peaks: locally-made, entrepreneurial, owner/operated, and boutique rather than big box. Many of the shops and bars around town sport artwork that comes from members of ArtZone Sun Peaks, an artistic collective which also offers classes to locals and visitors. In Vertical Café and in the Tourism Sun Peaks offices, check out monthly art exhibitions from local artists and artisans. The ethereal photo art in Cahilty Creek Kitchen is care of Kyle James, a member of ArtZone’s Photography Collective, and also photo journalist for Sun Peaks Independent News.

For those not quite worn out by the extensive skiing, there’s a mountain menu of energetic activities on offer at Sun Peaks. Snowshoeing is relatively easy to learn and, once over the waddling-like-a-penguin stage, it becomes a really tranquil and energy-saving way to get around on the deep powder and snowshoe trails surrounding the resort. Harder core is the snowshoe trail to McGillivray Lake – a four hour expedition with scintillating scenery and carb-counteracting rewards. The Nordic Centre is another option with cross-country ski rentals, lessons, camps and, notably, the Holy Cow Nordic route, reachable by the Morrisey chairlift. For family fun or group glee, Ski Biking is a must (ages 12 and over). Whether a skier, boarder, expert or intermediate or even non-skier, everyone is reduced to beginner status, involving loads of laughs and funny photo opps, as everyone progresses along the relatively quick learning curve to proficiency. With rentals, lessons and clinics available from the Activities Desk, this is another chance to hang out with local character Babo (aka Stefano Babich) who also runs the Open Mic night.

Over its 27 year history, Sun Peaks Resort has won accolades in Canada, US and European publications. Ski Canada Magazine, for one, awarded it best grooming (twice), best weather (twice), best après, best kids’ resort, best terrain variety, best race training centre, best kids’ terrain park, best ski in/out village, best Alpine resort for summer, and best locals.

Any day of the week, particularly first thing in the morning, earlybird skiers might bump into Al Raine testing out the terrain. A super-fast skier thanks to his pro-racing and coaching days, he’s always on the lookout for freshly groomed steep slopes such as Fifth Avenue and Spin Cycle for a carnival of carving – and great photo vantage point. The entire skiable acreage is typically snow-covered for an almost five-month season, yielding fun runs through the glades, bowls, trails, tracks and tributaries and Raine knows all the stashes. Having lived here since Tod Mountain morphed into Sun Peaks Resort in 1993, he puts it in a nutshell: “We’re so lucky here. We have Colorado in Canada without the crowds.”