This BC Powder Highway Hill Just Pulled 190 Acres of Glades Inbounds

Whitewater Ski Resort, the deep-snow hill outside Nelson, British Columbia, is bringing its Short Side zone inside the ski area boundary for the 2026-27 season. The resort says the move adds about 75 hectares (roughly 190 acres) and six new runs to the trail map, with skiing planned from a December 4, 2026 opening.

Short Side sits between Giddy Up Gully and Sproulers, close enough to existing lifts that locals have been ducking ropes into it for years. That traffic happened in terrain that was unmapped, ungroomed, and unpatrolled. Moving the boundary turns a well-known sidecountry habit into controlled, patrolled skiing, which matters more than the acreage number for anyone who has watched tracks disappear past a rope line.

What the crews actually built

Bringing the zone inbounds took more than redrawing a line. Whitewater worked with F2 Logging, whose crew spent about a month in the area, and the resort reports more than 50 hectares of glading completed. New road construction and two new ski ways tie the pod into the rest of the mountain, moving skiers from Buckshot toward the Shrine and back to the Backside Ski Way.

• New terrain: about 190 acres (75 hectares), six runs, fall-line glades
• Access: two new ski ways linking Buckshot, the Shrine, and the Backside Ski Way
• Opening target: December 4, 2026, conditions permitting

Off-season work went beyond Short Side. On Bonanza, the blue run that winds back to the Summit Chair, a spider excavator spent two weeks redistributing rock. The goal is to cut the snow depth needed before grooming from about 50 inches to around 40, which could get that run into shape sooner in a thin early season.

Why it matters for Powder Highway trips

This is the third step in a steady expansion. The Raven chair opened in 2023 with 123 acres and 14 runs, the Goat Slide area followed, and Short Side now pushes total skiable terrain past 1,400 acres. For a resort that averages around 470 inches of snow a year, more patrolled tree skiing is the kind of growth that spreads storm-day crowds rather than just adding a number to the brochure.

Whitewater still skis like an independent: modest lift count, a lot of trees, and no mega-resort base village. Skiers building a Kootenay road trip often pair it with RED Mountain in Rossland, then push north to Revelstoke or east to Kicking Horse. The new terrain gives Whitewater a stronger case for an extra day on that loop.

Details come from Whitewater's own 2026/2027 season update. For terrain, lodging in Nelson, and getting there, see our Whitewater resort guide.