Whistler Blackcomb issues apology after rocky shift into spring operations

BLACKCOMB GONDOLA WILL REMAIN CLOSED WEEKDAYS FOR MAINTENANCE, CREATING LONG LINES MONDAY AND PARTICULAR CHALLENGES FOR ADAPTIVE SKIERS MID-WEEK

BY MEGAN LALONDE

AFTER A ROCKY START to spring operations left guests and locals fuming on Monday, April 17, officials at Whistler Blackcomb found themselves issuing a public apology by the following afternoon.

“Spring skiing is underway, which brings operational changes, too—and we didn’t do a great job of explaining exactly why certain things are happening as we made this shift yesterday,” read the statement put out on Tuesday, April 18.

“Additionally, we should have been more out front with you about what to expect on Blackcomb for these final weeks of spring, and we apologize.”

Whistler Mountain closed for the winter season on Sunday, April 16, in order to prepare terrain for the Bike Park’s May 19 opening, summer sightseeing offerings and even next winter’s operations. Most passholders were aware only Blackcomb Mountain would be open for skiing and snowboarding for the next month, with daily hours of operation shortened to 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

As evidenced from the high volume of complaints online, fewer knew that only the eightperson Excalibur Gondola would be spinning to bring guests out of the valley on April 17. The queue for Excalibur stretched all the way back through Whistler Village to Araxi late Monday morning, while the 10-person Blackcomb Gondola in the Upper Village remained closed. Excalibur will be used for uploading daily until Blackcomb’s May 22 closing day. Accessible from Skier’s Plaza and Base II, it will be the sole upload lift running on weekdays: the Blackcomb Gondola will only spin on weekends (plus Victoria Day, which this year falls on Monday, May 22).

“We feel confident that we can manage appropriately during the week, but we definitely had a miss yesterday, complicated by the spring storm,” read the April 18 message, posted to Whistler Blackcomb’s social channels and signed by interim COO Doug Pierini and vice-president of mountain operations Doug Macfarlane.

A spokesperson for Whistler Blackcomb confirmed the resort updated its website to include that operations information on March 9. Asked if information about Blackcomb Gondola’s weekday closure was communicated elsewhere, the spokesperson said the resort included a call to action in its spring and summer operations dates announcement, prompting guests to visit a link in its Instagram bio for a more detailed breakdown of upcoming operating hours.

BLACKCOMB GONDOLA CLOSED WEEKDAYS, GLACIER OPENS AFTER ALL

The Blackcomb Gondola typically spins daily throughout the entire season since it was installed in December 2018, but it is reportedly due for more substantial maintenance in its fifth year of operation.

Each spring, crews at the biggest resort in North America—which boasts one of the longest ski seasons on the continent, plus a heavy roster of summer offerings—“need to take care of a variety of maintenance needs and prep work on both mountains ahead of summer kicking off,” Whistler Blackcomb’s message read. “This year, it includes necessary preventative lift maintenance on Blackcomb

Gondola, which is required by Technical Safety BC and additionally by our lift manufacturer … This all must be done within the spring timeframe, which makes it a bit tricky as we continue to operate through May.”

Higher on the mountain Monday, skiers and riders were also bummed to learn Glacier Express wasn’t slated to open this spring. The resort also attributed that closure to annual maintenance, before reversing course Tuesday and adding Glacier to the list of chairlifts that will spin daily until May 22. Excelerator, Jersey Cream, Catskinner, 7th Heaven and Crystal will also continue to operate until Blackcomb’s closing day, though “All information is condition-dependent and subject to change,” the resort cautioned in an operations update posted Monday.

Spring sightseeing is available daily, via Excalibur at a discounted rate of $20 per person on weekdays, and via the Blackcomb Gondola on weekends and May 22 at regular prices. The Peak 2 Peak Gondola is closed until it reopens for summer sightseeing on June 10.

Whistler Blackcomb directed guests to its Lifts & Terrain Status Page and Mountain Operations Twitter feed for real-time updates. Officials also issued a reminder Tuesday about Lot 8’s closure while the parking lot remains a staging area for construction on the Fitzsimmons Express chairlift replacement this spring. Lots 1-7 will remain open.

‘THEY’VE CLOSED THE MOUNTAIN TO DISABLED PEOPLE’

Social media was full of skiers and snowboarders Monday enraged over long lines, what many described a lack of communication from the resort, and, for those living closer to the Upper Village, the extra inconvenience of making their way to Skier’s Plaza or Base II, but the Blackcomb

Gondola’s closure presented a particular challenge to guests hitting the slopes in a sitski. The Excalibur Gondola typically does not accommodate sit-skiers or wheelchair users, according to Whistler Blackcomb’s website.

James Waggot travelled to Whistler from the U.K. with his friend of three decades, Fraser Kennedy, a sit-skier who has visited the resort on a near-annual basis for the last 15 years. Expecting the Blackcomb Gondola to be up and running until the end of the season, they planned this year’s trip for spring. The 10-person cabins mean Kennedy can usually upload in his wheelchair before transferring to his sit-ski at the Rendezvous Lodge, where he can access restaurants, washrooms and keep his wheelchair tucked away close by.

“Closing Blackcomb Gondola the day after Whistler [closed] takes ALL of this away,” Kennedy explained in a message. “I can’t access any facilities as I can’t get my wheelchair up the mountain. Instead of preparing on the hill, I now have to do it next to the gondola in front of hundreds of people and then haul my sit-ski into the gondola with me in it.” Kennedy said his skis have already been damaged by the gondola’s concrete and metal flooring.

The sentiment was echoed by Alex Cairns, a former Paralympic skier who “religiously” parks at the Cabin on Base II, heads downhill in a sit-ski and boards the Blackcomb Gondola using a wheeled device he can ski onto. According to Cairns, the disabled parking spot near Excalibur’s Base II station is positioned in a way that restricts him to accessing the download side of the lift, meaning he needs to head down to the village before looping back uphill.

“It’s not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things—we’re very fortunate to be able to ski and live in the place we live, and I

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Garry Watson, the Whistler visionary who never stopped giving back

THE LAWYER, COUNCILLOR, DEVELOPER, AND COMMUNITY CHAMPION DIED THIS MONTH AT 89

BY BRANDON BARRETT

GARRY WATSON had a lot to brag about. Considered one of Whistler’s founding fathers, he was instrumental in the eventual establishment of the ski resort and its renowned village, and, in innumerable other ways, lent a steady, guiding hand that ushered Whistler into the thriving ski destination it would become.

A lengthy list of accomplishments that could fill several lifetimes, no doubt. But Watson, who died earlier this month at 89, never did it for the plaudits.

“He was very humble. He didn’t blow his own horn. He did things quietly in the background,” recalled Anne Popma, Watson’s wife of 36 years. “Garry always had the bigger picture in mind, and that was the creation of a community, not just a strip mall and parking lot for a ski hill … They were charting new territory.”

That picture began to take shape for Watson in 1961, when, after climbing up to the top of Whistler Mountain (then called London Mountain), he peered down at the wild valley below, and made a decision: this is where he would live.

For most, this would have been where the pipe dream ended. But for Watson, an accomplished lawyer and tireless man of action,

Spring Ops From Page 14

don’t lose that perspective that I’m a very lucky person,” he said. “But when you’re being paraded down the bottom of the gondola, as a disabled person who then has to go back up, it’s like … why the 10 minutes?”

A spokesperson for Whistler Blackcomb confirmed Tuesday all three Excalibur stations would be equipped with ramps allowing sit-skiers to load and exit the gondola cabins using “Rupert Rollers,” a speciallydesigned device to enable sit-skiers to remain in their sit-ski when transitioning from their this pie-in-the-sky idea wasn’t so far-fetched.

“He just loved the valley. He loved the mountains, He loved everything about Whistler,” Popma said. “He spent a good part of his life making it what it is today.”

‘THE RIGHT THING TO DO’

As a member of the Garibaldi Olympic Development Association, Watson was a key player in selling Whistler in a 1968 Olympic bid, a precursor to the community realizing its own Olympic aspirations at the 2010 Games.

That dovetailed into the establishment of Garibaldi Lifts Ltd., which assessed the viability of London Mountain as a ski area years before the resort officially opened to skiers in the winter of ’66.

Watson also served on Whistler’s original council, elected in 1974, and was the pointman on negotiations with senior levels of government on the eventual establishment of Whistler as a resort municipality the following year.

“These guys were selling a dream at the provincial and federal level that you couldn’t do today. They were basically saying, ‘Look, we’re going to build a destination resort from scratch, it’s going to be developed under the

SEE PAGE 16 >> wheelchair or the snow, onto the gondola.

Waggot said the rollers weren’t available for Kennedy Monday or Tuesday.

“Treating disabled people ‘equally without privilege’ was a mantra of Whistler for so long,” Kennedy expressed. “There is no measure by which Vail can claim this with this decision. In effect, the entire mountain is off limits for wheelchair users unless you make huge compromises to your ski day, ask too much of friends and trash your equipment.” n

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Original Whistler councillor and current Sun Peaks Mayor Al Raine—whose own legacy looms large over the resort—considered Watson a trusted mentor, his legal acumen and practicality a fitting complement to Raine’s more heady ideas.

“We shared some common vision,” Raine said. “I had no understanding whatsoever how the political system worked. We had this vision we could build a tourist destination ski resort at Whistler and it would work, but with Garry’s legal background and development background, he had the ability to figure out how to do it. I was his student. I had lots of vision and big ideas, but none of the practical experience to make it happen.”

Selling their shared vision for a pedestrian-only village at the foot of Whistler and Blackcomb mountains proved to be a taller order than one might expect with the benefit of hindsight. Inspired by the walkable villages they had visited in European ski towns, Watson and Raine had to contend with a group of private landowners who wanted to see Whistler Village developed on their plot of land—for obvious financial gain. Hard to fathom today, it would have likely created a series of ski villages dotting the highway, as opposed to the consolidated village millions of visitors enjoy today.

“We went to numerous meetings in Victoria in the days when Whistler could have gone a completely different direction. Cabinet ministers in Victoria respected him. He had a great ability to present ideas and concepts and get his point across without talking for 10 minutes,” Raine said. “I’m sure most people in the community don’t understand the pivotal role that he played. He didn’t do it because he thought he was important or his ideas were important, he did it because he felt like that was what Whistler had to do. It was the right thing to do.”

‘BUILD IT, BUILD IT, BUILD IT’

It was this strong moral sense, along with a fervent love for Whistler that only seemed to grow deeper as time passed, that informed all the ways Watson gave back to his community. Along with serving three successive terms on council as alderman, he also served on the board of the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, the Community Foundation of Whistler (now the Whistler Community Foundation), and the Whistler Health Care Foundation, a role in which he led fundraising efforts to acquire the Sea to Sky’s first-ever CT scanner at the Whistler Health Care Centre ahead of the 2010 Olympics.

“It was all these things that are essential to a healthy community,” Popma said.

Only the second person to be awarded the Freedom of the Municipality by the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW), the highest order a council can bestow, after resort pioneer and historian Myrtle Philip, Watson set a formidable example for the dozens of elected leaders that would follow in his footsteps.

Whistler Mayor Jack Crompton said Watson was always available for advice, even in recent weeks, before his health took a turn.

“Garry was a mentor for people. I have had a lot of conversations over the last week about his work and one thing that jumps off the table is Al Raine saying how big of a mentor he was to him,” he said. “It strikes me that, when they started to work together in the early ’70s, he was mentoring people then, and weeks before he passed, he was mentoring me, consistently sharing ideas about how Whistler could be a better place. From 1961, when he first saw the valley, until he left us, he’s been working to build this place. It’s pretty exceptional.”

Asked for the most significant thing he learned from Watson’s guiding influence, Whistler’s mayor didn’t hesitate. “The critical importance of investing in housing for workers. Garry had a lot to say about a lot of things, but he was a broken record on housing. Build it, build it, build it,” Crompton said.

By the late ’80s, Watson could foresee the incoming need for affordable housing locally. In 1989, he was hired by the RMOW as its employee housing coordinator, and was later appointed as the executive director of the Whistler Valley Housing Society—a precursor to the Whistler Housing Authority, started in 1997—and successfully launched land acquisitions and zoning applications for housing projects on Lorimer Ridge, Millar’s Ridge and in Brio. Watson was also instrumental in establishing the use of restricted covenants in the village, “ensuring village properties would always be available for public rental,” Crompton said. “And those are just a few of the concepts that he brought to the table. He had a special blend of vision for the future and legal training that allowed him to deliver that vision in important ways.”

For The Community

But beyond the many undeniable contributions he made to the community he so loved, Watson was at heart a playful, giving, and thoughtful man who told anyone who would listen that his greatest achievement was marrying his wife, Popma, who he met on a blind date in 1985.

“He was a fun-loving guy,” she said. “He loved to make people laugh, and he could tell stories to make them laugh. He was generous. He was kind. He made people feel good.”

Whistler’s journey from tiny ski-bum enclave to modern tourism mecca has been an unlikely one, to say the least, and that was not lost on Watson himself, who never missed an opportunity to marvel at the ski resort that he played a vital role in shaping.

“We would go to concerts in Olympic Plaza, and he would just look around and be so proud of what had happened here in Whistler,” Popma said. “The resort is almost secondary. Yes, we need a great resort, but it was the community that always motivated him.”

The RMOW is hosting a reception for Watson at 5:30 on May 2 at the Maury Young Arts Centre. Whistler Museum executive director Brad Nichols will lead a presentation detailing Watson’s legacy in the community. n