Category: Ski-Town Stories

From Whistler to Blackcomb to Whistler Blackcomb.

Full Moon over WhistlerFull Moon over Whistler

May 6, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

In January 1988, Whistler Mountain announced a new event for the lift company to coincide with the full moon on February 2. Over a hundred skiers could buy tickets to a Moonlighting evening that included a full-course dinner at the Roundhouse and a moonlit ski down to the valley guided by patrollers and instructors, followed by a “moondance party” at Dusty’s with live entertainment. The idea for the event reportedly came from Bernie Protsch, a ski patroller, and Werner Defilla, vice president of food and beverage, who had both seen similar events while working in Switzerland. The first full moon event would seem to have gone well, with another planned during the World Cup Week in March. When the participants did not know, however, was that theirs was not the only part on Whistler Mountain that evening.

A full moon over the Coast Mountains. Greg Griffith Collection

At a recent Speaker Series featuring mountain caretakers, Janet Love Morrison, Laird Brown and Colleen Warner shared stories from their time living on Whistler Mountain in the 1980s. Laird and Colleen spent over two years living at midstation and Janet and Gord Harder lived at the Alpine Service Building at the top of the Red Chair. According to Janet, while guests and staff (including Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation President Lorne Borgal) were enjoying a fine dining experience at the Roundhouse, she and Gord decided to have their own party at their place.

At the time, Laird had built an ice rink between the Roundhouse and the Alpine Service Building and, according to Janet, they “just wanted to go outside and go ice skating.” Knowing that the event was still ongoing, however, their party of six to eight people decided to stay inside until those at the Roundhouse had departed. Once the official guests had headed down the hill, the unofficial party went for a moonlit skate, had a few more drinks, and then decided to go skiing.

The Alpine Service Building also housed the alpine caretakers. Whistler Question Collection, 1978

With the help of two ski-dos driven by Gord and another friend, the party did multiple laps of Upper Whisky Jack before rolling one of the ski-dos, breaking the flag, the key and the windshield. It was about 4 am by the time they got the machine back up to the Alpine Service Building and Janet stayed up to do the 5 am weather reading, a daily duty of the alpine caretaker. Later that day, Janet and Gord went to the office of Jamie Tattersfield to confess what had happened to the ski-do. He looked at them, asked if everyone was alright, and said, “Ok.”

Being out in the alpine during a full moon was far from a new experience for Gord and some of his friends. Prior to the construction of the Peak Chair in 1986, the Peak Bros. would camp on the peak for every full moon, hiking up for about an hour from the top of the T-bar at the end of the ski day and setting up tents. According to Shawn Hughes (also known as SO), this tradition went on faithfully every winter full moon for over six years.

Peak Bros from left to right: ‘SO’, ‘Rox’ and ‘Crazy Harry’. Harder Collection

The construction of the Whistler Express Gondola in the summer of 1988 made the alpine caretaker position redundant and the mid-station and valley caretaker positions were phased out over the next few years. Whistler Mountain’s full moon dinners at the Roundhouse, however, continued into the 1990s.

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The Inn CrowdThe Inn Crowd

April 29, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 2 Comments

It’s not uncommon when looking through newspapers to find letters responding to stories and events in previous issues. It is less common, however, for letters to be given a whole page, be accompanied by multiple photographs, and to be addressed to a building. In the April 16, 1981 edition of the Whistler Question, Jan Systad wrote a letter to the Cheakamus Inn after learning from the April 9 issue that the lodge she had worked at was going to be torn down.

The Cheakamus Inn, rebranded as the Whistler Vale after a change in ownership, though the restaurant retained the Cheakamus name. Whistler Resort Association Collection

The Cheakamus Inn was built for $300,000 in 1965 by Eric Beardmore, one of the founding directors of Garibaldi Lifts Ltd., and his business partner Frank Menendez. It had two dormitories (one for men, one for women) and 22 private rooms and could reportedly sleep up to fifty guests. The Cheakamus also had a dining room and bar. According to Ian Beardmore, the Cheakamus was modelled after the lodges at Alta, Utah, where his parents would often go for a week or two each ski season with the Wilhelmsens and the Woodwards (fellow directors of the Garibaldi Olympic Development Association and Garibaldi Lifts); Frank Menendez even worked at the Rustler Lodge in Alta for over a decade before coming up to Alta Lake.

Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, the Cheakamus served as a gathering place for guests and others around the ski hill. In 1967, Tony and Irene Lyttle held their wedding reception there following a ceremony at the Whistler Skiers’ Chapel and on Sundays the Cheakamus hosted General Information Night, where skiers at Whistler for the week could come see a slide show and ask questions of mountain representatives. Some winters also saw film nights at the lodge courtesy of Pacific Ski Air and the Cheakamus was known for events such as their annual New Year’s Eve masquerade party, which in 1970/71 was given a Disneyland theme.

Ted Pryce-Jones presents opening gifts to John (J.R.) Reynolds and Roland Kentel of Tapley’s Pub. Before opening Tapley’s, John Reynolds came to Whistler to run the bar at the Cheakamus Inn. Whistler Question Collection, 1981

The Cheakamus was also the site of some more unexpected events. In August 1970, according to Garibaldi’s Whistler News, the Cheakamus was the host of the Simon Fraser Solid State Physics School, a two week summer school that gathered scientists from around the world. The lodge was also the site of one of Dag Aabby’s more memorable stunts at Whistler when he jumped off the rood on his skis and landed in the parking lot below.

When looking back at the Cheakamus before its demolition, what Jan Systad remembered most were the people she had met and the friends she had made there, a sentiment reflected in most stories about the Cheakamus Inn. Providing room, board and a ski pass, the Cheakamus employed many long-time Whistler residents during their early years in the valley, including Colin Pitt-Taylor, Roger McCarthy, Bob Daniels, Connie Cathers, Charlie Davies, Roger Systad and more.

In 1965, John Reynolds, also known as J.R., came to the Cheakamus to work as a bartender and assistant manager under Frank Menendez, who filled both the chef and manager roles. According to Jan, under John the bar was “respected and cherished” and “your drink was poured as you came through the door and by the time you reached the bar it was waiting for you.” After leaving the Cheakamus and the Whistler area for a time, John returned to Whistler in the 1976/77 season to run the bar at JB’s and opened Tapley’s Pub in 1981.

The original Cheakamus Inn building was demolished in the summer of 1981 to make way for a larger building. Whistler Question Collection, 1981

The Cheakamus Inn changed hands in 1975 and by 1981 was operating under the name Whistler Vale. It was announced in April 1981 that the Whistler Vale would be torn down and a new, larger hotel would be built on the site, incorporating salvaged lumber and reusing part of the foundation. It was expected that the new hotel would be ready to open by December 1981. Although the building was demolished in June, construction did not got as planned and no hotel had arisen by the end of the year. For those who knew the Cheakamus Inn, however, Jan concluded that “the memories and friendships will never go.”

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Before Whistler KidsBefore Whistler Kids

April 22, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 2 Comments

For many kids who grew up skiing on Whistler or Blackcomb Mountains in the 1980s and ’90s, attending ski school could be an important life experience that formed unforgettable childhood memories. Whether you attended Kids Kamp or Ski Scamps depended on which mountain you (or, really, your parents) skied and, though it wasn’t something that most students noticed, the two schools were part of the competition between the two ski hills.

Ski Scamps was introduced on Whistler Mountain for the winter of 1983/84 in response to Blackcomb’s Kids Kamp, a ski school designed specifically for children. According to Mike Hurst, who began working for Whistler Mountain as a marketing consultant by 1982, Blackcomb was “a very competitive entity” from its early operations. This meant that if Blackcomb had a program targeting families, Whistler had to have one too. Whistler was able to find space and reorient some of their existing instructors with the help of ski school director Bob Dufour while Hurst secured sponsorship for the program from 7-Eleven.

Ski Scamps on Whistler Mountain in the program’s first season, 1983/84. Greg Griffith Collection

Though Whistler already had a ski school and offered lessons, Ski Scamps was a bit different. Instead of a private or small group lesson, it offered a full-day program throughout the season with different levels based on ability and special events, and included lunch. It was designed for children aged three to twelve and season pass holders could even buy a $190 Scampers Pass that, along with their lift pass, offered unlimited access to Ski Scamps programs and lessons. Parents could drop their young skiers off in the morning and pick them up again at the end of the day after a full day on the hill.

One of those young skiers was Mercedes Nicoll, who began attending Ski Scamps in 1986 at the age of three. Though her family lived in Toronto at the time, her parents had had a place in Whistler since the 1970s and they would always come back for Christmas holidays and spring break. Whenever they came back, Mercedes would go skiing in Ski Scamps. According to an oral history interview in 2024, Mercedes loved Ski Scamps, though apparently her parents and babysitters might remember it a little differently. As hard as it might have been to get her there in the morning, Mercedes recalled coming home with a huge smile on her face.

A Ski Scamps skier shows off her green circle bib. Whistler Resort Association Collection

Ski Scamps had different difficulty levels through which skiers would progress but, because her family did not stay for the entire season, Mercedes remembered she was “a red star forever, there was no getting rid of that bib.” She fondly recalled the structure at the learning area where they would eat lunch, often grilled cheese or hot dogs. According to her, “I remember it just smelling of sweaty gloves, but we were all in it together and it was amazing.”

One of Mercedes’ memories from her Ski Scamps days happened (as many do) on Pony Trail one Christmas Eve. She couldn’t remember exactly how it happened, but she knocked out one of her front teeth with her pole, leaving blood everywhere on the run. Luckily for her, her next door neighbour in Whistler was a dentist who told her family that they had to go to the dentist in Squamish as she had knocked it back to the nerve and could feel it every time she breathed. As Mercedes put it, “There’s little bits of the mountain where I have childhood core memories from, good or bad.”

Halpipes like this one built on Blackcomb’s Horstman Glacier in 1994 were a great training ground for new snowboarders. Blackcomb Mountain Collection, Randy Lincks, 1994

This incident and her time spent as a red star didn’t hold Mercedes back on the mountain. After her family moved to Whistler permanently in 1995, she began snowboarding with some of her friends. She started entering local competitions and doing well, leading to a long career as a professional snowboarder and a four-time Olympian competing in the half-pipe.

After Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains merged under Intrawest in 1997, Kids Kamp and Ski Scamps came together to form Whistler Kids. Mercedes still sees some of her Ski Scamps instructors out on the mountain and, when she sees classes of kids skiing or snowboarding, can’t help thinking, “Oh, they’re living their best lives, they don’t even know it yet.”

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It’s a Small WorldIt’s a Small World

April 1, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 2 Comments

Last month we shared a story about Whistler residents encountering each other while traveling when, in 1984, Inge and Jens Nielsen discovered Chuck Blaylock was piloting their flight back from Europe. It’s also not uncommon for visitors or residents to come across someone in Whistler who they know from outside the valley, often long before they moved to the area. In the 1990s, this phenomenon happened to Karen Vagelatos when she dropped her kids off at ski school.

Karen grew up in the Vancouver area and first visited Alta Lake as a teenager in the summer of 1963 when she, her cousin Bob Calladine, and their racing coach Lorne O’Connor were part of a group that climbed up Whistler Mountain and were filmed skiing Whistler Bowl. Karen learned to ski at the age of three (not surprising as her father had a popular ski shop in downtown Vancouver for many years) and was a member of the Canada National Ski Team from 1964 to 1968, competing in two Olympic Winter Games.

Karen is seen next to Nancy Greene during the 1969 Toni Sailer Summer Ski Camp. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection

After retiring from racing, Karen coached for the Whistler Mountain Ski Club and the Toni Sailer Summer Ski Camp and even when living in Vancouver continued to visit the area regularly, first staying with friends and then buying a cabin. Her family moved up full-time in 1995.

By 1995, Karen and her family had moved over to Blackcomb Mountain and were members of the Blackcomb Ski Club. When asked why she made the switch after such a long history on Whistler, Karen explained that is was not as much about the terrain as it was the chairlifts; Whistler was still running double chairs while Blackcomb had triples, which meant that she and her husband could each take two of their four young kids instead of sending them up with other skiers.

A Kids Kamp lesson on Blackcomb Mountain. Blackcomb Mountain Collection

This switch meant that her children attended Blackcomb’s Kids Kamp and when taking them in one she came across none other than Florence Petersen at reception. Karen happened to be with someone she went to high school with who pointed out Florence as “Flossie,” their PE teacher in Burnaby for grades 11 and 12.

It might seem strange to some to call a teacher by a nickname, but Florence was known to quite a few of here students as Flossie. Florence attended Burnaby North Secondary School before doing her teacher training at the Vancouver Normal School. At the time, most new teachers would spend a few years teaching at a one-room school after completing their training before they applied for positions in the larger city schools. However, there was a shortage of trained PE teachers in the late 1940s. Florence was one of only a few in her year who completed the extra course to be qualified, meaning she went straight into teaching at city secondary schools.

Florence’s first position was as a PE teacher at a school in Coquitlam, where she was only a year older than some of her oldest students. After two years, she moved to Burnaby North, her alma mater, where she taught for the next fifteen years. When she first arrived back at Burnaby North, she found herself teaching former schoolmates who had been young students when she graduated. Looking back in 2007, she recalled “I have to thank them all for being very respectful” and calling her Ms Strachan in class and Flossie outside of school.

Florence and Don Gow on the Burnt Stew Hike in the 1950s where Burnt Stew Basin was given its name. Gow Collection

Florence later transitioned into counselling and went first to Moscrop Junior High and then Burnaby South Secondary School before retiring in 1983 after 36 years as a teacher.

In 1955, while teaching at Burnaby North, Florence and fellow teachers and friends Betty Gray (Shore), June Tidball (Collins), Kelly Forster (Fairhurst) and Jacquie Pope purchased Witsend, a cottage on Alta Lake that they would visit regularly until it was destroyed by a fire in 1965. Florence moved up permanently when she retired, joining her husband Andy Petersen who had already been living in their Whistler property full-time.

As well as becoming Whistler’s first marriage commissioner and a founding force behind the Whistler Museum, Florence could sometimes be found working in places such as the Kids Kamp building, where Karen Vagelatos came across her. Though Karen had not known about Florence’s connection to Alta Lake, after this first meeting she would regularly see her around Whistler. Looking back, she recalled Florence as a great but demanding PE teacher with high expectations of her students.

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