Apex Mountain Resort hosts Dummy Downhill, celebrates season success outside of not winning the TopPeak competition

Photo: Barb Haley

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Photo: Barb Haley Photo: Barb Haley Photo: Barb Haley Photo: Barb Haley Photo: Barb Haley Photo: Barb Haley Photo: Barb Haley

Crowds of roughly 700 people were up the ski hill at Apex Mountain Resort on Saturday afternoon to watch the Downhill Dummy course.

Apex Mountain Resort GM James Shalman said 14 dummies took on the highest flying dummy downhill in the world.

Locals and Apex businesses and staff members spend hours up to a few days building up their homemade contraptions to launch over the edge.

This event marks the end of a great ski season for the local mountain.

"Tomorrow is the last day of the season. It is snowing heavily right now and it looks like it's gonna be more of a powder day than a spring day. Although the sun is supposed to be shining tomorrow... [It's] a great way to end the season," Shalman said.

Apex Mountain Resort celebrated one of its best opening weekends ever this season, getting to open with the entire mountain a week early.

"Normally when we open it's a limited opening due to snow conditions, but because the snow conditions were so amazing, we had the entire mountain open right from day one and conditions only got better throughout the season."

Apex Mountain Resort was also lucky enough to make it to the final three in a nationwide competition to crown the "most invested" ski hill in Canada, with a $100,000 grand prize.

The Mackenzie TopPeak annual competition first, second and third-place announcements were on CBC National Saturday at 2:45 p.m. local time, where Apex found out they sadly did not earn the grand prize.

"We're just happy that we made it this far," Shalman added. "We don't know if we came in second or third at this point, but the fact that we just made it into the top three in Canada, and more importantly, it's about the support that we got from the community."

"From the skiing community, from those that some don't even ski with us but we're just happy for us to be in the challenge. It's just been an overwhelmingly positive experience all in all, regardless of where we placed."

Just being in the final three guarantees $10,000 for Apex. Second place gets $20,000.

"We just really appreciate everybody coming up and enjoying Apex Mountain Resort and wish everybody a fantastic summer and already looking forward to seeing everyone next winter."