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Whistler

WHISTLER , 56km beyond Squamish, is Canada’s finest four-season resort, and frequently ranks among most people’s world top-five winter ski resorts. In 1996, for the first time ever, Ski , Snow Country and Skiing magazines were unanimous in voting it North America’s top skiing destination.

Skiing and snowboarding are clearly the main activities, but all manner of other winter sports are possible and in summer the lifts keep running to provide supreme highline hiking and other outdoor activities (not to mention North America’s finest summer skiing). Standards are high, and for those raised on the queues and waits at European resorts, the ease with which you can get onto the slopes here will come as a pleasant surprise.

The resort consists of two adjacent but separate mountains - Whistler (2182m) and Blackcomb (2284m) - each with their own extensive lift and chair systems, and each covered in a multitude of runs. Both lift systems are accessed from the resort’s heart, the purpose-built and largely pedestrianized Whistler Village , the tight-clustered focus of many hotels, shops, restaurants and aprés-ski activity. Around this core are two other “village” complexes, Upper Village and the recently completed Village North. Around 6km to the south of Whistler Village is Whistler Creek (also with a gondola and lift base), which has typically been a cheaper alternative but is now undergoing a $50 million redevelopment that will see its accommodation and local services duplicating those of its famous neighbour. In truth the whole ribbon of land on and just off the main Hwy 99 from Whistler Creek to Whistler Village is gradually being developed - Whistler is the single fastest-growing municipality in BC.

WHISTLER VILLAGE

WHISTLER VILLAGE is the key to the resort, a newish and rather characterless and pastel-shaded conglomeration of hotels, restaurants, mountain-gear shops and more loud people in fluorescent clothes than are healthy in one place at the same time. Its name is said to derive from the piercing whistle of the marmot, a small and rather chubby mammal, which emits a distinctive shriek as a warning call. Others say the name comes from the sound of the wind whistling through Singing Pass up in the mountains. Whatever its origins, the village has all the facilities of any normal village, with the difference that they all charge more than what you’d pay anywhere else. At the same time it’s a somewhat soulless place, very much a resort complex rather than an organic village, though for most people who are here to indulge on the slopes, character is a secondary consideration. Huge amounts of money have been invested in the area since the resort opened in 1980, and the investments have paid off well; the resort’s services, lifts and general overall polish are almost faultless, and those of its nearby satellites are not far behind. The resort area averages more than two million visitors a year, and Whistler’s challenge is now turning towards being able to rein in development before it spoils the scenery, killing the goose laying the golden egg.