Whitewater Ski Resort faces off against Revelstoke Mountain Resort in round two of Ski Town Throwdown with voting open on Halloween day.
Rebeckah Hornung, sales and marketing director with Whitewater is excited for the Powder Magazine sponsored challenge to continue pegging Nelson’s winning hill against such a good competitor.
“We’re going up against Revelstoke and they’re obviously a great resort on the powder highway as well,” she says.
“Every resort has its special character. I am obviously a little biased,” she laughs, “but Whitewater and Nelson are such an amazing package with so much to offer — culture and music, being on the lake and having Ainsworth nearby. We have the great snow, as Revelstoke does, but we have a little more of that community feel.”
Voting is open for one day only as Whitewater takes on Revelstoke in the Great White North/Spread Eagle division.
“The fact that it’s just 24-hour rounds, it’s interesting. When it goes for a week there are ebbs and flows. But this round, we have 24 hours to decide,” says Hornung who had her phone at hand hitting refresh to reveal votes throughout the day last round.
Varying the length of the voting period is one of several changes to the competition since last year. There are also twice as many ski towns in the running — 64 this year, compared to 32 last year. And communities that were grouped together last year, like Nelson and Rossland, have been split up.
“It’s a bit of a different game this year. We don’t have the leveraging of Rossland and Red Mountain. We’re going solo,” Hornung says.
Red Mountain beat out Kimberley in round one and goes on to face Fernie starting November 5. The former teammates of Rossland and Nelson could face each other in round four if both communities make it that far. As the competition progresses, the voting period will become longer giving more chance for communities to rally behind their favourite hill.
And that’s what it’s all about — “showcasing how much love this area has,” Hornung says.
“It’s all about community support. We don’t decide. The people decide,” she says. “There was a lot of effort put forth last year to put us at the top so it will be interesting to see. But we had good results in round one and we’re looking forward to round two.”
In the last round, Whitewater collected 801 votes, far surpassing the 360 logged for Kelowna’s Big White Ski Resort.
To vote for your favourite ski hills, go to facebook.com/powdermag and scroll through the news feed for posts about the current competitions.