Placeholder photo Northern Vancouver Island · Sayward & Port McNeill
Vancouver Island's
Best Powder.
The Island's only community owned and operated ski hill — run by the Mount Cain Alpine Park Society, a non-profit whose whole job is keeping this place open and North Islanders working.
Passes are published year-round — but the price list carries no season year. This concept is mostly about fixing that.
- 1
- Community-owned ski hill on the Island
- 100 %
- Volunteer-run society
- $699
- Adult season pass
- $5
- 12 and under
and it is this one
Mount Cain Alpine Park Society
season year not published
for the printed pass
No vertical drop, no run count, no founding year. The Society does not publish them on its own site, so this concept leaves those slots to facts it can stand behind.
Sample data — demo only
Today on Cain
How a live conditions panel could read — updated each morning by whoever is on the hill.
Open today
- New snow
- 18 cm overnight
- Base depth
- 212 cm mid-mountain
- Temperature
- -3 °C at the base
- Freezing level
- 650 m rising
- Hill Open
- Access road Plowed
- Parking Open
- Ski patrol On duty
Every figure and label above is illustrative. Which fields a real panel carries — and which of them exist on the hill at all — is the Society's call, not ours. The point of the block is that storm days, road closures and opening news would live in one place instead of only on social media.
Why Cain
A ski hill the Island owns outright
Placeholder photo Vancouver Island's only community owned and operated ski hill
Those are the Society's own words, and they are the whole proposition. There is no resort group behind Mount Cain, no outside owner and no shareholder waiting on a return — just a non-profit society that the people who ski here run themselves.
Placeholder photo It exists to keep North Islanders working
The Society sets out its purpose plainly: to provide "employment opportunities for North Islanders" and to keep "Mount Cain as a viable ski community". A pass here is not a lift ticket transaction — it is what funds both of those sentences.
Placeholder photo Vancouver Island's Best Powder
The Society's own tagline, and the reason people drive from the whole north Island for a storm cycle. What we have not done is dress it up with a vertical drop or a run count — the Society does not publish either, so neither does this concept.
Season passes
The prices are published. The season is not.
These are the season pass prices the Society publishes, exactly as published. What is missing from the page they appear on is any mention of which winter they buy. Somebody shopping for an early pass has no way to tell whether they are reading this season's list or a leftover from the last one.
- Adult
- $699
- Youth & senior
- $437
- Family
- $1400
season pass
13–18 and 65+
season pass
Reproduced from the Society's published pass page. The season these prices apply to is not labelled anywhere on that page — so this concept does not label it either. It just shows where the label belongs.
See the full pass page Placeholder photo The one problem
A $699 pass with no year on it
In the exact weeks Islanders start shopping for an early pass, the pass page sells a $699 adult season pass without naming the season, while the homepage still reads "Ski season '25/'26 has now come to a close". Four small changes settle it for good.
How we would fix it →-
One
Name the season
A single field — the season label — set once each year and printed beside every price, in the page title and in the browser tab.
-
Two
Date the price list
A visible "prices published on" stamp, so a pass shopper can tell at a glance whether they are looking at this winter or last.
-
Three
Retire the closing notice
A closing banner that expires on a date, instead of a homepage that still says the season has come to a close while passes are on sale.
-
Four
One place to change it
Season, prices and deadline all live in one short file. Updating next winter is a five-minute job for a volunteer, not a web project.
The hill runs on volunteers
Mount Cain is operated by a non-profit, volunteer-run society. That is the model, and it is why a season pass is a contribution rather than a purchase.