Tag: Cypress Lodge

Fishing Alta LakeFishing Alta Lake

July 18, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 3 Comments

Before Whistler became known as a ski resort, Alta Lake was known as a summer and fishing destination, drawing visitors and summer residents each year to join the relatively small population of residents who stayed in the area throughout the year. Summers were busy and groups such as the Alta Lake Community Club (ALCC) and Alta Lake Sailing Club regularly hosted events during the season, including dances, regattas, and a Fish Derby.

Fishing was a popular activity for both residents and visitors to Alta Lake and getting to eat what they caught could turn into a social occasion. For David Fairhurst, whose parents owned Cypress Lodge and who was a child at Alta Lake in the 1960s and 1970s, fishing was also something to do at a time when there were relatively few children in the area and very few organized activities. As David remembered in an interview earlier this year, “You could go and do your own thing… Myself, I used to spend a lot of time fishing, tromping around the creeks and the lakes and stuff.”

David Fairhurst shows off Pine mushrooms, rather than fish. Whistler Question Collection, 1979.

According to Carol Fairhurst, her brother grew up fishing from “the day that he could see a fish” and he and their father would be out in a boat fishing all the time. Both David and Carol remember there being lots of fish. As David recalled, “Every body of water was teeming with fish” and he would catch Rainbow trout, Dolly Varden, Bull trout, and Kokanee. Most of the fish that David remembered catching were average size trout, though he did remember a few Rainbow trout that were sixteen to eighteen inches long, which were considered “really big fish.”

Some of the fish would be eaten fresh, some frozen, and others smoked. This abundance of fish meant that the freezers at Cypress Lodge and the Fairhurst family home would sometimes fill up. Florence Petersen, who was a close friend and neighbour of the Fairhurst family, wrote in 2006 that “Knowing that Andy [Petersen] liked to BBQ fish on the hibachi, David would come over every so often to ask if it was ‘time for a fish fry?’ We knew that this was the sign that he needed another freezer to store his catch!”

Cypress Lodge, September 1962. Fairhurst Collection.

Fish fries were a good reason for a get-together, whether it was an informal gathering of friends or an official event organized by the ALCC. Carol recalled taking either a dock with a motor or a boat out on Alta Lake and motoring around while people caught fish and they barbecued them on the spot.

John Burge, whose family first stayed at Cypress Lodge in 1956 and then built their own cabin to visit each summer, remembered the ALCC Fish Derby and the big community fish fries that would happen at the end of the summer. Though John didn’t enjoy fishing, his parents did. According to him, “If they got a big fish, they would… take it to Dick [Fairhurst] at Cypress Lodge and it would be frozen. Whoever got the biggest fish would win a prize at the end of the summer.” Although he didn’t recall the specific prize, the 1959 ALCC newsletter announced that the Fish Derby prize would be $10 for the largest Rainbow trout caught in Alta Lake “by any legal method.” All of the fish that had been saved from July through September would be thawed and cooked and eaten on the grass at the Cypress Lodge point.

Other competitions also took place during events at Cypress Lodge, such as pie eating contests. Fairhurst Collection.

As skiing and winters became more popular, fishing and summers became less prominent. Today there are not as many fish in the lakes and creeks and all fishing in Whistler is now catch and release. Fishing is no longer the main draw for visitors but other activities like mountain biking have once again made summer a busy season for the area.

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Transition PointTransition Point

June 27, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Before lifts were built and the area became known for its snow and skiing, tourism in the valley focused on the lakes and the summer months. Though various cabins from the 1920s to the 1950s can still be seen amidst much more modern homes on the shores of Alta Lake, many of the buildings from this period are gone today due to various fires and redevelopment. Some buildings, however, managed to make the transition to year-round use and can still be found today.

Dick Fairhurst began operating Cypress Lodge on Cypress Point in 1954. It started with a few cabins built by Dick and three pre-exisiting cabins and a tearoom from Harrop’s Point. Dick, his mother Elizabeth, and later his wife Kelly continued to add to and renovate the property into the 1960s. Construction began on the main lodge building in February 1963 and was completed for the 1965 May long weekend. Though Cypress Lodge had been built with summers in mind, the Fairhursts were quickly able to expand their business to include winter ski seasons. Often the cabins on the property were rented out year-round to people working in the valley. The lodge building was filled with work crews for BC Highways in summer and with skiers in winter.

Cypress Lodge while it was operated by the Faihursts. Fairhurst Collection.

In 1972, the Fairhursts sold Cypress Lodge to the Canadian Youth Hostel Association (now known as Hostelling International (HI) – Canada) for $140,000. The sale included all nine buildings on the site, including the main lodge, the cabins, and the Fairhurst’s family home on the upper portion of the property.

The property was officially reopened as a hostel in July 1973. It aimed to provide affordable accommodation to individuals and groups of travelers throughout the year. In 1973 it could accommodate 21 guests and cost only $3/person, including breakfast. Over time the hostel increased its capacity and provided housing for its staff and long term tenants. At a museum event in the 1990s, Alex Kleinman remembered his days managing the hostel in the early 1970s. Because the hostel had hot running water, he would often trade showers and a warm place to hang out in exchange for chopping firewood and making small repairs to the property from some of the people squatting nearby. When three people living in a geometric dome by the side of Scotia Creek appeared at 3 am one morning because a bear had walked through the tarp walls of their home, he provided them with a place to stay.

A group of skiers play cards in the Youth Hostel. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection.

Around 11:30 pm on December 26, 1994, one of the small two-bedroom cabins near the lodge caught fire, according to reports in the Whistler Question and Pique Newsmagazine. Luckily, there was no one in the cabin at the time as it was quickly engulfed by flames. The hostel staff evacuated the guests from the lodge and guests and staff began shoveling snow against the lodge and wetting it with a garden hose to prevent the fire from spreading. Despite their efforts, when the Whistler Fire Department arrived the fire had spread to the lodge roof. The firefighters were able to extinguish the fire but not before it had traveled through the attic bedrooms and down some of the rafters. The lodge escaped with only some charring and water damage while the small cabin was destroyed.

Alternative accommodations had to be found for the hostel guests during one of the resort’s busiest weeks of the year. The Delta Whistler Resort provided five free rooms and other hostel guests were put up by neighbours and Greg Warham, the manager of the hostel. One local resident even offered up a five-bedroom house for the guests scheduled to arrive the following week.

The Whistler Youth Hostel (and a little bit of Meadow Park) in 1989. Whistler Cable Collection.

The hostel continued to operate out of the Cypress Lodge property until July 1, 2010. Before it closed the hostel had a capacity of 28 and eight staff members. That same month, HI-Canada opened its current location in Cheakamus Crossing with a capacity of 188 and a staff of twenty. The property on Alta Lake was purchased by the Resort Municipality of Whistler and continues to be used today by the Point Artist-Run Centre and the Whistler Sailing Association.

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Whistler Mountain’s Mighty Rope TowWhistler Mountain’s Mighty Rope Tow

December 27, 2022 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Though often overshadowed by new gondolas, colourful chairlifts, and T-bars that open up exciting new terrain, rope tows are an important part of the history of skiing in Whistler. Requiring no towers, rope tows can be relatively easy and inexpensive to build and move around and have often been used to service slopes for beginners and small hills. The first ski lift operated in the Whistler valley was a tope tow built by Dick Fairhurst in 1960 using an old Ford V8 motor under the power lines along Alta Lake Road, where the Fairhursts owned Cypress Lodge. Rope tows were also used by the Rainbow Ski Area, Blackcomb Mountain, and Whistler Mountain.

During Whistler Mountain’s early seasons, rope tows were also essential to providing beginner terrain but, because they often moved around, they were not included on trail maps and can be hard to trace today. In a small, one paragraph article in November 1967, Garibaldi’s Whistler News announced the installation of a new beginner lift on Whistler Mountain, a 900-foot surface cable lift manufactured by Mighty-Mite near the upper terminal of the Blue Chair. Not finding any other information in our records, we asked around and were able to find out more about this lift, including its role in selling season passes (thank you to Lynn Mathews, Renate Bareham and Hugh Smythe for your help!).

This Mighty-Mite lift was installed for the 1967/68 season, the second full season of operations on Whistler Mountain. According to Mathews, the lift company faced two difficulties: a limited budget for building runs and lifts over the summer, and limited beginner terrain except for at the gondola base at the valley. At the time, Whistler Mountain would open on weekends as soon as there was enough snow in the alpine, but no snow in the valley meant that beginner skiers would “stand in the area around the top of the Red Chair not knowing what to do or where to go.” To alleviate this problem, the Mighty-Mite was installed around what is now the top of the Emerald Express and the Whistler terminal of the Peak to Peak Gondola. Beginners could easily ski from there to the Roundhouse and were able to download via the Red Chair and gondola. When there was more snow in the valley, the Mighty-Mite was moved down to the beginner terrain at the gondola base.

A youngster makes their way up the Mighty-Mite lift on the beginner terrain in today’s Creekside area. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection.

In late Octobers and into Novembers, the Mighty-Mite was used by Jim McConkey and the ski school to assess and train instructors for the coming season. The Mighty-Mite was also used to entice skiers to buy season passes. As Mathews recalled, the lift company needed to sell season passes in the fall in order to fund the winter operations and so the Mighty-Mite was installed at the top of the Red Chair very early one season so the lift company could take photos of people skiing at the top of Whistler Mountain. These photos were used to advertise early season skiing in newspapers in Vancouver and Seattle. People were encouraged to “buy early, ski early” and ski enough by New Year’s Day to pay off their ski pass. The campaign worked and hundreds of people bought their season passes.

The Mighty-Mite continued to be used at the top and bottom of Whistler Mountain into the 1970s until it was replaced by a Harusch Handle Tow manufactured in Squamish. Over the next decades, various forms of rope tows could be found on both Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains. Today, however, beginner terrain is more likely to be serviced by a magic carpet and rope tows have become much harder to spot in the Whistler area.

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The annual Alta Lake ‘Regretta’The annual Alta Lake ‘Regretta’

September 6, 2022 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

For many people, the Labour Day long weekend marks the end of the summer; school holidays are over and the days are getting noticeably colder and shorter. Knowing the warm days are coming to an end may bring a sense of sadness to some. This feeling was even more palpable in the community of Alta Lake, where the population increased in the summer months and life revolved around the lake – fishing, swimming and sailing. The biggest community celebration ran over the September long weekend and was named the ‘Regretta’ because the community regretted that summer was coming to an end.

The Alta Lake Sailing Club ran out of Cypress Lodge and regattas were held each long weekend throughout the summer. Opening the sailing season was the Jelly Fish Race held on the May long weekend, then the Dominion Day Derby was held on July 1, and the biggest event of them all was the annual Regretta held on Labour Day weekend starting in 1965.

Many different sailing craft participated in the annual Alta Lake Regretta. Petersen Collection.

The Regretta was a day-long celebration that incorporated sailing races, as well as fun contests and activities for children and adults alike. Alta Lake became a colourful display of sailing craft with Sabots, Davidson D12s, Flying Juniors, Enterprises, Hobie Cats and Catamarans all popular. Sabots were the first boat of choice as the 8 foot sailing dinghies were light enough to carry up the bank for storage at the end of the summer.

Along with the regular regatta races, fun races and obstacle courses kept both participants and spectators entertained. ‘Repel all boarders’ was an obstacle race with up to five people on board vying to get through the course the fastest without any ‘pirates’ boarding the boats or losing any crew members. There were also ‘free-for-all races’ that allowed splashing and tipping – any tactics to delay the other racers were encouraged.

There were many amusing activities for the “landlubbers” too, often organised by Florence Petersen. In a recent oral history with Carol Fairhurst, whose parents owned Cypress Lodge, she remembered fondly, “We would have the three legged race where two people tie their inside leg together and you have to run. The sack race where you’d get in a potato sack and you had to hop. Then there would be egg-throwing contests, pie-eating contests, tug-of-wars where they had two wharves and two teams and the losing team got pulled into the water. The pie eating contest was always huckleberry pies so it was hilarious because people would end up with blue faces. It was a good time. The sail boat races were a big deal.”

A pie-eating contest in front of Cypress Lodge, an important part of the summer regattas. Fairhurst Collection.

Another activity from the Regretta that should definitely be brought back in the interests of entertainment is the Alta Lake pole vaulting contest. The aim of this competition was to launch yourself high into the air over the lake and land in an inner tube.

Prizes and trophies were presented for both the serious and not so serious competitions. Renate Bareham, née Ples, grew up in Alta Lake and remembers winning a hand mirror in the log rolling competition.

Karen Gow (left) and Renate Ples (right) during the log rolling competition in 1967. Bareham Collection.

This celebration of summer brought as many as 100 residents and weekenders together for a day in the sun, which was quite the turnout for a small community. Throughout the ten or so years that the Regretta ran it certainly left an impression on all those lucky enough to take part.

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