A story about skiing in the South Cariboo, the building of a ski hill and struggles with snow levels
By Max Winkelman
Skiing in the Cariboo has a long history. Before Mt. Timothy, which re-opened as a ski destination on Dec. 23, 2019 after being closed for one year, was built, 100 Mile House and Williams Lake each had their own ski hill. 100 Mile House had a small hill overlooking the town and Williams Lake had what was originally the Squaw Valley ski hill and was renamed Timberland after a number of years.
Both of those went down because of a lack of snow, says Michael Kidston who’s been skiing in the area for decades.
“Those were viable hills when they were started in the late 60s early 70s. We had 10 years of nice big snowpacks and historical records will tell you we had the snowpacks for 30, 40 years before that.”
Due to the dwindling snowpack, both ended up looking for a new mountain. After separately submitting applications for land in the Mt. Timothy area, the 100 Mile House application was accepted and the two groups teamed up to build a new ski area and society. Stan Carey, public relations coordinator for the society in the early days, said at the time both 100 Mile House and Williams Lake were notorious for inadequate snow levels, something which he said wouldn’t be a problem at Mt. Timothy when it was ready to open in 1987.
Max Winkelman 