Sasquatch Mountain (Hemlock) ski resort review

Sasquatch Mountain Overview

Sasquatch Mountain is a small ski resort located in British Columbia near the towns of Mission and Abbotsford, around a 2-hour drive from Vancouver. It only has three lifts and around 400m of vertical, so it really is just a local hill for those living in the area (if you’re driving two hours from Vancouver to go riding, Whistler is obviously a better choice!)

Homepage and piste map

Terrain, snow, off-piste, access, etc for Sasquatch Mountain

I’d never even heard of Sasquatch Mountain before I went there (it was actually still called Hemlock at the time – the name changed in 2017), but having travelled around BC and Alberta in an unsuccessful attempt to find work in Whistler, Revelstoke, or Banff, I ended up back at my friend’s place in Vancouver and through a friend of hers I heard there was work in Hemlock. I then spent a week in Hemlock working as a lifty, and while I liked the friendly atmosphere of the resort and the warmth I felt the management showed to their staff, it really would have been disappointing to spend the season there having started out with visions of Whistler (and the pokey Hemlock staff accommodation wasn’t really somewhere I wanted to live for three months!), so when I got an email inviting me to an interview at Vancouver’s Cypress Mountain, I jumped at it and spent the rest of the season in Vancouver.

To be honest, there’s no point in going to Sasquatch unless you’re already in the Mission / Abbotsford area, in which case it offers you a place to go for an easy day’s riding without having to drive far. If you don’t have wheels, the closest you can get by public transport is Mission from where it’d still be an hour or so by taxi. (I had a ride from Van up to the resort which was nice & easy, but then a rather interesting return journey involving a hitchhike down the hill from what turned out to be a drunk driver, and a long wait stuck outside Abbotsford bus station in a blizzard with the bus arriving just as I was getting into hypothermia territory)

Note also that in some seasons the resort has suffered from a lack of snow and either opened late or failed to open completely. With that said, Sasquatch has an expansion plan which would see it add snow making equipment and twenty additional lifts at higher altitudes, so it could one day become a fair-sized resort. Until then, I can’t recommend making the effort to go there when there are so many fantastic options in BC; but if you’ve searched online for Hemlock/Sasquatch and ended up here, chances are you’re not a local and are seeking information (maybe you’ve been offered a job and are wondering whether to take it – and I’d say sure give it a go, they’ll take care of you and riding there is better than not riding!), so I hope you find this useful.

If you’re looking for accommodation information, Sasquatch’s site has an accommodation page here. Also see hotels in Abbotsford

Have you been to Sasquatch? What did you think? Are you a local who thinks I’m talking rubbish, or do you have a great tip to share? Does my information need updating? Leave a comment below and let us know!

(Photo Credit: Kyle Pearce, Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License)