Mount Washington Alpine Resort is on Vancouver Island, 30 minutes north of the Comox Valley. The summit is 1,588 metres (5,210 feet), with 505 metres (1,657 feet) of vertical on 1,700 acres. Five chairlifts and a beginner carpet area called Easy Acres serve 82 alpine runs, and the Boomerang chair reaches The Outback terrain. The resort says it averages about 9 metres (354 inches) of snow a year. The Whiskey Jack chair and a teaching carpet run for night skiing.
Henry Norie and Alex Linton opened the resort in 1979. The Nordic Centre at Raven Lodge has more than 55 kilometres of cross-country trails, about half of them in Strathcona Provincial Park, BC’s oldest provincial park. Its facilities were upgraded to Olympic standards before the 2010 Winter Games.
Alpine Cam is at the Alpine Lodge and looks at the Eagle Chair and the front side of the mountain. It runs 24 hours a day and shows a time lapse of the previous day. Marmot Metre is the snow stake. It’s cleared around 4 pm each day, so in the morning it shows the snow that has fallen since the afternoon before. Nordic Cam looks over Raven Lodge and Strathcona Park, which helps if you’re heading to the cross-country trails.
None of the cams shows the Strathcona Parkway, so check the road before you drive up.
The resort is at 1 Strathcona Parkway, off Highway 19, 30 minutes from the Comox Valley and about 1.5 hours from Nanaimo, where the ferry from Horseshoe Bay lands at Departure Bay. That crossing takes about 1 hour 40 minutes, and the Tsawwassen to Duke Point ferry takes about 2 hours. The closest airport is Comox Valley Airport (YQQ).
The resort says the BC Ministry of Transportation requires every vehicle on the Strathcona Parkway to have good winter tires and carry chains, ready to fit when the chain-up light is on. Mainroad North Island maintains the parkway. On the province’s map, Highway 19 between Nanaimo and Campbell River isn’t a designated winter tire route. In BC a winter tire needs at least 3.5 mm of tread and either the M+S mark or the mountain-snowflake symbol. DriveBC shows road conditions.
Mount Washington is on the Indy Pass, with 2 days at the alpine area and 2 days at the Nordic centre. The Indy Base Pass has blackout dates; the Indy+ Pass doesn’t. It isn’t on the Epic or Ikon Pass.