Travel
A milestone anniversary spotlights North America’s largest ski resort, where family memories take hold and generations return year after year
Sixty years ago, on January 15, 1966, Whistler Mountain officially opened with little more than a four-person gondola, a double chairlift and two modest T-bars. Almost a decade later, in September 1975, the municipality of Whistler was established in a successful effort to expand B.C.’s winter tourism industry. This included incorporating the adjacent Blackcomb Mountain, developing a pedestrian village for visitors, and implementing an urban plan designed to attract permanent residents. Today, Whistler welcomes more than two million guests each year, drawn like moths to the bright flame of North America’s largest ski resort.
The behemoth of Whistler-Blackcomb can be explored at any age and for any number of reasons. In my 20s, I’d drive up from Vancouver to ski all day and extend après into wild nights of clubbing, with seasonal Antipodean workers who worked hard and played harder. In my 30s, I enjoyed the growing arts and culture scene, from the Whistler Film Festival to Cornucopia, Whistler’s popular culinary festival. These days, with kids in tow, I’m chasing family-friendly activities both on and off the mountain. A successful family ski trip should be easy and convenient, minimizing the schlepp while maximizing the fun.
First major issue: my kids don’t want to leave the Fairmont Chateau Whistler. We’ve signed up for the eighth-floor Fairmont Gold experience, which essentially operates as a hotel within a hotel, complete with its own reception and concierge. Benefits include priority access to the hotel’s car service for easy travel around the village, and complimentary meals in an exclusive lounge, including an excellent breakfast buffet. There’s also the pool and spa, ski rental and ski concierge, all located at the base of Blackcomb Mountain. Extracting the kids from the pool and fresh desserts in the lounge took some effort, less so after 15 centimetres of fresh overnight snow.
We’re ascending inside the Blackcomb Gondola with a local who is clearly delighted by the season’s first big dump of powder. I ask which of the two mountains he prefers. “If you live here, you have your preferred mountain,” he tells me. “Most locals prefer Blackcomb, because there are a lot fewer tourists.” It’s a good thing Whistler-Blackcomb is so big, because there are a lot of us.
Tourists are taking advantage of Whistler’s inclusion on the Epic Pass, a single seasonal ticket that unlocks 90 global ski resorts in the Vail Resorts portfolio. Tourists visiting from Australia, the U.K., Mexico, Brazil, or Japan. I meet plenty of American visitors, all of whom appreciate the current exchange rate. British Columbians take advantage of seasonal promotions that make expensive lift passes more affordable. With such an influx of visitors, it’s understandable that locals occasionally put on more airs than kids doing jumps in the terrain park.
From mid-mountain, we find our groove on the groomers, eat a surprisingly varied lunch at the busy Roundhouse Lodge, consisting of tikka masala, Thai green curry, and of course, chicken strips. When the lifts close for the day, we return to the Fairmont for an obligatory hot tub and hot chocolate. My wife is suffering from early-season muscle cramps, so I arranged a treat for her in the morning, provided she manages to escape.
Whistler has excellent restaurants to enjoy long, slow dinners over great food and wine. Unfortunately, kids do not enjoy long, slow anything. Our weekend balanced this conundrum with outstanding pie at Pizzeria Antico, fondue at Fairmont’s Chalet, and dinner at our favourite 21 Steps and Bar. After dinner, they burn off their excess energy at Olympic Plaza’s skating rink, and their mental energy at Escape! Whistler. It’s our first family experience inside a themed escape room, where groups search for clues to unlock doors before our time runs out. Whistler’s version has six themed rooms with clever contraptions and perplexing puzzles.
We did not come close to escaping the Pinball Machine Room, but the kids loved bouncing around like multi-balls. Our favourite night out is at Vallea Lumina, an immersive forest walk illuminated with projections of sound and images. All these off-mountain activities make magical family memories.
Long overdue for a break from work, part-time school and parenting, my wife beamed when we sent her off in the morning for a surprise day at Scandinave Spa. Surrounded by quiet forest and an array of thermal baths, it’s easily among the best spa experiences in the country. Chairs are carefully placed to encourage peaceful views of nature, rather than kids cannonballing in a hotel pool. Silence is famously mandatory, phones are locked away, and no mom or dad will leave disappointed.
Aida Varga, a veteran ski instructor, helps us navigate the easier trails on Blackcomb. She patiently offers pointers on our technique and guides us to the smaller ski-school lineups. If your time is limited, having a guide to access priority chair line-ups is worth the investment on its own.
Varga has lived in Whistler for 25 years, taking a front-row seat to the tremendous growth of both the resort and the community. This includes the 2010 Olympic Games, new high-speed chairs and gondolas, and the transformation of Whistler-Blackcomb into a major summer destination for mountain bikers and hikers, too. As a local, Varga agrees that Blackcomb is the more dynamic mountain, although the Peak 2 Peak Gondola — with the world’s longest and highest unsupported span — allows you to enjoy the best of both mountains.
It’s a long way from humble beginnings, when the area we now call Whistler was first earmarked for an Olympic bid that would take another half-century to come to fruition. That first double-chair lift has been replaced by 37 chairs that can serve nearly 90,000 people per hour. A simple mountain hut has grown into 18 on-mountain restaurants with nearly 7000 seats. And a small village has expanded into a vibrant community with more than 15,000 permanent residents. With more than 3237.5 hectares of skiable terrain and 200-plus trails, it’s a lot to take in. Unlike parents taking their kids on a ski trip of a lifetime, Whistler never gets old or tired.
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