Vance Creek dominates the front side of the mountain, offering the bulk of beginner and intermediate terrain with groomed runs that draw most of the resort's traffic. The Comet Six-Pack Express ferries skiers from the village base to the 1,915-meter summit in minutes. Adjacent to Vance Creek, Silver Woods provides intermediate gladed runs - skiing through trees rather than around them - while The Attridge adds variety with its mix of groomed and natural terrain. Then there's Putnam Creek, the backside, where the mountain reveals its serious side. Double black diamond runs plunge through moguls and tight trees, serving advanced skiers who find the frontside too tame. The Powder Gulch Express accesses this terrain, and the Home Run T-bar provides the escape route back to the village.

Most ski resorts treat cross-country skiing as an afterthought, a few kilometers of tracked trail to appease the Nordic enthusiasts. Silver Star inverts this formula. Combined with Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre, the area maintains over 105 kilometers of trails groomed daily - not weekly, daily - with skating lanes and classic tracks for every style of Nordic skiing. The system ranks as Canada's largest daily-groomed network, a claim the resort backs up with infrastructure: warming huts, rental equipment tuned for racing-level performance, and a community of cross-country skiers who consider downhill a sideshow. The 'champagne powder' snow that draws alpine skiers works equally well under Nordic skis, light and dry enough to glide without drag.

When the snow melts, the chairlifts keep turning. Summer visitors load mountain bikes onto the four-bike carrier system that operates on every second chair, eliminating the lift lines that plague some resorts. Over fifty kilometers of downhill trails drop through terrain that looked very different under snow, complemented by thirty kilometers of cross-country routes for those who prefer pedaling up as well as down. The trail breakdown favors intermediates - roughly 43% blue - but beginners find gentle paths and experts discover technical challenges that winter never revealed. Hikers share the mountain with bikers, wildflower tours revealing alpine meadows inaccessible in winter, the views stretching across the Okanagan to mountains beyond.

Silver Star's village exists primarily for function: ski-in ski-out accommodation clustered tight enough that everything lies within walking distance. But the color scheme transforms function into identity. Those painted facades photograph well against snow, stand out in summer greenery, and create a sense of place that generic lodge architecture cannot match. The village is small - nothing approaching the scale of Whistler or even Big White - but it works efficiently, with equipment rentals, restaurants, and accommodation compressed into a compact core. The nearby provincial park shares the mountain's slopes, offering additional hiking and Nordic trails under provincial rather than resort management. Vernon lies thirty minutes downhill, Kelowna an hour south via Highway 97, providing urban services for those who need them and care to make the drive.