If you were asked to name Whistler’s first ski lift, you would be likely to answer the original Creekside Gondola, one of the t-bars, or the original two-person Red Chair.
You would also be wrong.
No, that distinction goes to a modest little rope tow, installed by the enterprising Alta Lake pioneer Dick Fairhurst in 1960, almost 6 years before Whistler Mountain opened for business. The rope tow ran under the power lines behind Fairhurst’s Cypress Lodge on the west shore of Alta Lake (later used as a hostel and today home to The Point Artist-Run Centre). The rope tow ran for more than 800 feet. Powered by an old Ford V8 motor, it could pull four skiers up at a time.
Aside from the wonderful footage of the ski lift and skiers (though snow conditions appear to be sub-par), you also see a little Snow-cat machine that belonged to Dick. Dick was enamoured by snow machines of all sorts and would later become a dealer for Bombardier snowmobiles. He was also a founding member of the Black Tusk Snowmobile Club which still exists today, operating a club cabin on Brohm Ridge near Mount Garibaldi.
It may not be the Peak-to-Peak Gondola, but this humble little ski lift lays claim to a very special and under-appreciated honour as the first lift in the Whistler Valley. We’re extremely fortunate to have this short clip, another gem from the Petersen Family home video archive. Enjoy!
Superb! My Dad told me about this lift, and I think he skied there during an early trip to Whistler.
Alan
I learned to ski on this slope. My instructor was neighbor Stephan Ples, who had been a guide in the Tirol region of Austria and who was responsible for laying out many of the original ski runs on Whistler. The Ples’s lived in a house on Denman St. in Vancouver (long since demolished) before moving to Whistler permanently. The lift only ran for a few years. At one point, the rope was destroyed in a fire in one of the outbuildings at Cypress Lodge; the Alta Lake Community Club rallied together to raise enough money to replace it, and the rope tow operated for a year or two longer.