Tag: Alta Lake

Whistler’s First Ski LiftWhistler’s First Ski Lift

January 21, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

It’s likely that the groomed runs of Whistler or Blackcomb Mountains are some of the first images that come to mind when thinking about lift-accessed terrain in the Whistler area these days. For those who skied here in the early 1960s, however, lift-accessed terrain looked very different.

The first motorized ski lift in the Whistler area was not a gondola, a chairlift, or even a T-bar, though all three were installed on Whistler Mountain during the summer of 1965. Rather, the first ski lift was an 850-foot rope tow installed under the power lines on the west side of Alta Lake Road by Dick Fairhurst and George Krieg a few years before Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. began construction.

Interest in downhill skiing in the Whistler area gained popularity in the early 1960s, spurred on by the 1960 Olympic Winter Games held in California and the subsequent formation of the Garibaldi Olympic Development Association (GODA). GODA planned to host the Olympics in Garibaldi Provincial Park, settling on London (now Whistler) Mountain. Throughout the winters of 1960/61 and 1961/62, GODA and other interested parties made trips to Alta Lake to explore the proposed site, monitor snow conditions, and test out the skiing. The “Alta Lake Echo,” the newsletter of the Alta Lake Community Club (ALCC), faithfully reported on the comings and goings of these groups alongside those of full and part-time residents of Alta Lake.

Skiers out underneath the powerlines – the rope tow can be seen on the right. Fairhurst Collection

In November 1960, GODA members and journalists visited Alta Lake to do a story on Whistler Mountain as a possible Olympic site to be published in a special “Winter in Canada” issue of Maclean’s. That December, 56 skiers from Vancouver traveled to Alta Lake “with skis and enthusiasm” led by Fred Taylor. Though the conditions were described as “ten inches of old crusty snow,” the group did some skiing on the hills behind Jordan’s Lodge, had dinner, and watched some films on the Olympics at the community hall before returning to the city on the train. With the growing number of these trips, it’s no surprise that Alta Lake residents decided to get in on the fun and set up some skiing for themselves.

Dick Fairhurst, whose family owned and operated Cypress Lodge (now the Point Artist-Run Centre), teamed up with George Krieg to install the valley’s first ski lift on the hill behind Cypress Lodge. They used a 1948 Ford V-8 motor to pull the rope through four pulleys that they mounted on four towers they built. The tow was 850-feet long and could pull three or maybe four people at a time, depending on their size. While it was not the most advanced lift, Dick later described it as “a start and lots of fun.”

Skiers take a break off to the side of the cleared “run.” Gow Collection

We are fortunate to have not only a few photos of this rope tow in the archives but also a film in the Petersen Collection that shows the lift in one of its first years of operation. The film shows rocky terrain, patchy snow, and a slow-moving lift. It also shows Alta Lake residents and guests walking up the road to the lift carrying skis, poles, and children while at least one dog runs around the skiers. Most of the skiers shown are smiling and appear to be enjoying themselves.

Unfortunately for the lift, a fire at Cypress Lodge in 1962 destroyed the storage shed where the tow-rope was kept alongside furniture built by Bert Harrop (the first also destroyed one of the cabins, a car, and a jeep). Florence Petersen used the readership of the “Alta Lake Echo” to fundraise for a new rope and, thanks to the generosity of Alta Lake residents, was able to present a new rope at a Presentation Party at the Krieg’s house that fall. The rope tow ran for only a few winters before Alta Lake residents and visitors had other options for skiing.

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Early Aches and Breaks at Alta LakeEarly Aches and Breaks at Alta Lake

November 12, 2024 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

A broken bone and accompanying cast are not an uncommon sight in Whistler during any season and are likely to become even more common as the mountains open and we begin another winter season. While these days most injuries are treated by medical professionals at the Whistler Medical Centre, a few stories from our archives show that residents of the Alta Lake area, prior to the development of Whistler Mountain, sometimes had to take a more hands-on role in treating themselves.

Louise Betts is the daughter of Jenny Jardine, whose family first came to Alta Lake in 1921 when Thomas Neiland, Jenny’s step-father, started a logging business. Jenny and her brothers grew up in the area and she married Wallace Betts, who had been working at one of the logging camps in the area, in 1937. Though the couple and their children did later move away from Alta Lake, Louise would often visit her grandmother Lizzie Neiland at her house in what is now Function Junction. A story from one of her visits would make anyone who has a bone set in Whistler today appreciate the care they receive.

Louise Betts with her brother Sam and grandmother Lizzie Neiland at the garden at 34 1/2 Mile (today the Function Junction area), around 1943. Jardine/Betts/Smith Collection

Louise and her cousin Alfie were playing in the field near their grandmother’s house. As Louise described it, “We’d go to the top of these little humps and lie down and roll to the bottom.” On one of these rolls, Alfie broke his arm. The pair ran to find Louise’s mother (according to Louise, “I can remember he just came screaming up”) and Jenny “grabbed him by the shoulder and straightened his arm out. Like that, thank you!” After creating a splint for his arm, Jenny, Alfie and Louise got on the train (Louise could not remember if it was a passenger or freight, though she thinks they waited for the passenger train) and headed for Vancouver. Luckily for Alfie, the doctors there concluded that Jenny had done a good job splinting his arm and after putting a cast on they were able to return to Alta Lake.

Like the Jardine-Neilands, the Kitteringham family also came to the Alta Lake area because of the forestry industry. Olie and Eleanor Kitteringham and their children Ron, Jim, and Linda lived at Parkhurst from 1948 to 1956 and, unlike many of the people who worked at the mill, stayed at Parkhurst year round.

Part of the townsite at the Parkhurst mill on Green Lake. Debeck Collection

With no doctor in the area, Eleanor told her family, “If you are going to get sick it has to be on a Wednesday, Friday or Sunday” as those were the days when the passenger train came through from Lillooet to Squamish. When Ron was about nine years old, however, he became sick and delirious for three days with a high temperature. Eleanor consulted her “doctor book,” which said that it might be bronchial pneumonia, and used the phone in the mill office to call up Dr Kindree in Squamish and ask that he put some penicillin on the train for her. The penicillin was “thrown off by the next freight at [the] station” and Ron soon recovered.

Not all of the stories in our archives have such fortunate endings and accidents at the mill could have life-altering results, as could untreated illnesses. In 1980, Dr Christine Rodgers and Dr Rob Burgess both set up practices in Whistler and began seeing patients, providing the first full time, year round medical care in Whistler.

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Calling WhistlerCalling Whistler

July 30, 2024 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 2 Comments

Placing a phone call in Whistler hasn’t always been as simple as picking up the nearest phone and punching in a number or selecting a contact. For those living at Alta Lake before 1957, placing a call could mean heading over to the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE) station or one of the lodges that were connected by BC Tel. The first telephone line in the Whistler valley was maintained by linemen of the PGE and BC Tel and reportedly had better reception at night. Over the years quite a few different people served as linemen, including Bob Williamson who moved to the area for the job in 1930, Howard Gebhart, Loyd and Doug Mansell, and Glen Creelman.

Bob Williamson at work. Smith Collection

In 1957, a double copper line was installed and an open circuit line around Alta Lake was established. This linked most of the lodges and cottages around the lake using wall-crank telephones (you can find one of these telephones on display in the museum’s exhibits). Each residence had its own identifying “jingle”, a combination of long and short rings representing a letter in Morse code, to let those connected to the line know who was the intended recipient of a call. Such lines were not uncommon in rural areas and could present unique challenges; party lines could be monopolized by one party using the line and offered little privacy, as others could sometimes pick up the phone and listen in. They could be effective, however, when trying to alert neighbours of emergencies.

According to the Alta Lake Echo, the newsletter of the Alta Lake Community Club, a microwave system was installed in the early months of 1960 and telephones in the area were put on new circuits for Alta Lake and Garibaldi. BC Tel’s “932” circuit followed, a number still found in many Whistler telephone numbers today.

Technicians at work inside the new BC Telephone Whistler office in April 1980. Whistler Question Collection, 1980

In 1980, BC Tel built a new office in Whistler to house a new “ultra-modern” telephone system. The new office, located on Lorimer Road, included space for three service trucks, a level for service equipment, and a diesel generator that would cut in automatically when the power went out to keep the phones going. The office was also going to be run electronically, programmed by a tape-fed computer, without any need for mechanical switching and therefore requiring no staff on site. Instead, it would be connected to Vancouver and Squamish with an alert system in case of any malfunction.

The new system promised more efficient service with automatic direct dial and collect-call dial, an option for a touch phone rather than a rotary dial, and direct calling to 38 countries. This also meant that you no longer had to give your number when dialing long distance, though you did now have to dial the whole number when calling another Whistler line. The lines around Whistler were upgraded during the summer and fall of 1980 in order to be ready for the new system in November.

BC Tel technicians and engineers explain the new system and office to Mayor Pat Carleton. Whistler Question Collection, 1980

The switchover to the new system occurred on schedule over the night of Sunday, November 16 in order to be operational for Monday, November 17. Although BC Tel crews worked through the night, it did not go entirely smoothly and by Monday morning over 100 phone lines in Whistler (including one belonging to the Whistler Question) were “completely dead.” According to Phil McLaren, the Network Operations Supervisor for BC Tel, this was caused by a series of cable that were connected “differently than expected” and it was still being worked on on the Tuesday.

At the time, the new office served around 1,400 customers in the Whistler area and had the capacity for around 3,000, with room in the office to expand up to 20,000. Today the number of phone lines in Whistler has grown far past the open circuit line of Alta Lake and the phones used to make calls look very different than the wall-crank telephones of the 1950s or even the touch phones of the 1980s.

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The End of the Alta Lake InnThe End of the Alta Lake Inn

July 16, 2024 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 2 Comments

When the Christiana Inn was opened by Sandy and Puddy Martin in 1967 it included lodging, a heated outdoor swimming pool, a beauty salon, gift shop, lounge area, and dining room. By the time they sold the property in the mid-1970s, they had added a second dining room, a tennis court, and poolside dining and dancing. The decor and menus changed over time, though the physical structure appears to have stayed more or less the same until the 1980s. The name did not change until the early 1980s, when the Christiana Inn became known as the Alta Lake Inn.

The Christiana Inn with the lagoon behind. George Benjamin Collection

In May 1985, a Vancouver-based company called 6380 Developments purchased the Alta Lake Inn for $357,000 (adjusted for inflation, that would be just over $900,000 today). The inn had been closed since the previous summer and the former owners had been foreclosed upon by the Morguard Trust. The owners had protested the sale and in early May were still assuring the operators of Whistler Windsurfing that they would be able to base their rentals and lessons at the Alta Lake Inn, but their protests were overruled by the Supreme Court of BC and Whistler Windsurfing was left to find a new home.

Windsurfers on Alta Lake pass in front of the Christiana Inn. George Benjamin Collection

The new owners shared their plans for the site with the Whistler Question in June 1985. According to Bob Skinner, president of Combined Equities Ltd., who were involved in the development, they were planning too demolish the existing buildings and build a 24-until lodge. He told the Question, “It’s going to be designed as a lodge, and it is a lodge” and denied the rumours that there were plans to build condominiums on the site.

Not everyone waited for the permit before making changes to the site. After hearing that the old Christiana Inn would be demolished and thanks in part to a rumour that the fire department was going to burn it down for fire practice, individuals removed parts of the building such as the sliding glass doors, kitchen appliances, and furniture before the municipal building inspector Dave MacPhail posted a stop work order on the site.

The building was demolished in July but construction did not start right away. Over the next few months, there were many debates and protests about the plans for the site. Some centred on the way the property had been created by filling in part of Alta Lake in the 1960s while others looked at the access to the property as at one point the developers proposed covering the long, steep driveway with a roof. In August, the municipality issued a building permit with the requirements that the developer install heat tracing along the driveway and “acquire legal title from the Crown to the landfill dumped 20 years ago by the original developer.”

The pool of the Christiana Inn was about as close to Alta Lake as it could get. Whistler Question Collection, 1978

In the fall of 1985, the property again made headlines when the developers proposed extending Lakeside Road across the lagoon to the property, cutting off access to Alta Lake from the lagoon. The plans for Alta Vista created when the subdivision was first surveyed did not show the lagoon but did include a road right-of-way, leading to a debate as to whether the lagoon was a lagoon or not. The developers claimed that residents had created the lagoon by excavating a channel to Alta Lake while residents claimed that lagoon had always been there and building this road would destroy it. According to Rolly Horsey, who had owned a property on the lagoon for almost twenty years, the surveyors had not personally visited the site before registering their plans. The claims of the residents were backed up by Sandy Martin, who wrote a letter saying that “the area was never properly surveyed” and that the lagoon was certainly there when he built the Christiana Inn.

The developers did not receive permission to extend Lakeside Road, which still ends at the lagoon today. It is unclear to what extent this decision changed the plans of the developers, but a 24-unit lodge was not built on the property. In June 1986, 26 brand new one and two bedroom condominiums with “live-in management and rental pool income” were advertised for sale, beginning at $85,000 (about $210,000 today) and the former Christiana/Alta Lake Inn site became known as Whistler on the Lake.

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