On Friday June 13th the Multicultural Festival will be held in the Florence Petersen Park between the Whistler Library and the Whistler Museum. This event is a delightful way to learn about the many corners of the world the people of Whistler have originated.
The festival is free and open to the public. There will be performances, food, music, games, and arts and crafts all happening between 4 and 8pm.
A group from the SLCC perform during the opening of the 2013 Multicultural Festival. Photo courtesy of the Whistler Multicultural Network.
Whistler has always been a place for people from all over the world. It has developed into what we see today through the multicultural influences of not only its first settlers – such as Myrtle and Alex Philip, who were Americans from Maine, and Polish John Millar – but also everyone who has followed in their footsteps.
Myrtle hunting at Mahood Lake.
This includes individuals such as Billy Bailiff a trapper from Cumberland, England who wrote about the importance of preserving Whistler’s environment in the local newsletter.
And then in later years, skiing was brought to the valley by a variety of people, many of which came from European countries where skiing was a popular sport – such as Switzerland and Austria. A great example of this is Franz Wilhelmsen, a Norwegian who became the first President of Whistler Mountain.
The Whistler Museum will be open by donation for the duration of the Multicultural Festival.
Franz Wilhelmsen (left) at the top of Whistler looking toward the peak.
Following up on our post from a few weeks ago, where we looked at Whistler Mountain as A Clean Slate, with the photos from Franz Wilhelmsen & Willy Schaeffler’s initial inspections from 1962, today we will look a little deeper into their first impressions of the undeveloped mountain .
Schaeffler’s report following their July 1962 survey was short, for as Franz Wilhelmsen noted, “a report covering all possible variations and reasons would be very long.” Instead, they worked under the assumption that the team would be able to purchase and develop the Jordan’s Lodge property, today’s Creekside, due to its large flat area for parking lots, and proximity to the railway. Remember, there was still no proper road access to the valley, so this last point was crucial.
Schaeffler was wholly unimpressed with the “logging chaos” that spanned the lower half of the mountain, which he estimated would require would “make skiing in this area with less than feet of snow almost impossible.” Thankfully, there was plenty of mountain above.
The lower half of Whistler Mountain looked like this in 1962.
Reading Schaeffler’s report, it’s remarkable to find so many elements of today’s ski resort already conceived at such an early stage. On their second helicopter ride into the alpine, Schaeffler notes how they were dropped off at “the saddle east of Whistler Mountain at 6,800 feet altitude,” a spot known today simply as “The Saddle” one of Whistler’s signature intermediate alpine ski runs.
From there they descended into “the major bowl with the most ideal north exposure.” Known today as Glacier Bowl, this was the first true alpine terrain to be included in the ski area, serviced by Whistler’s alpine t-bars.
Looking across the bowl, they also identified a wide-open, gentle sub-alpine slope they thought was perfect for an upper-mountain beginner area. Your might recognize this as the slope above Roundhouse Lodge and surrounding the top of the Red Chair.
Beyond terrain analysis, Schaeffler’s report also included his preliminary thoughts on infrastructure. Based on the sheer scale of the mountain, Schaeffler concluded that
“we must realize we are speaking here of a major European type ski area. In order to open up this mountain and use its full potential from the beginning, a different type of uphill equipment that has been used in normal North American ski areas must be built here.”
He was talking about a gondola of course, and a few year’s later Whistler Mountain indeed opened with British Columbia’s first gondola. Schaeffler’s initial lifts plan included a gondola, 3 chairs, and a t-bar, to service a predicted 2,000 skiers on peak days. Today Whistler-Blackcomb can see more than 25,000.
All these people would need to eat, so he also called for several hundred hotel rooms in the base area, and a cafeteria for those 2,000 skiers. Because the ski area was so large, and its focus was really the high alpine area, Schaeffler also anticipated an on-mountain restaurant.
His report includes a call for a “building which allows a 360 degree view from one room, perhaps with a fireplace in the middle” plus a cafeteria servicing 1,000 skiers, plus first aid and other amenities. He called this prospective building, simply, “The Roundhouse.”
Schaeffler returned multiple times in the coming years to fine tune their plans and oversee their implementation. His enthusiasm for the project never waned, as this 1964 Province article indicates:
Looking back through these photos and reports, it’s evident that Schaeffler had a huge, and largely under-appreciated impact. Not only time affirm the clarity of his vision, but having such a respected figure involved in the planning and backing the development with such enthusiasm certainly contributed to the growing buzz around the new ski resort.
Obviously several other key figures were instrumental in Whistler and Blackcomb’s continued growth over the next five decades. As this winter progresses, we’ll highlight some more of these figures and stories.
Every autumn the mountains are born-again, baptised by a blanket of frozen water whose crystalline forms are revered for their meteorological, rather than priestly blessings. But imagine, for a moment, what it must have been like to encounter these mountains for the first time, before our impressions had been shaped by chairlifts, lift-lines, and Instagram…
That’s precisely the circumstances in which representatives from the Garibaldi Olympic Development Agency found themselves in the early 1960s as they pursued their plans to develop an Olympic-ready ski resort in BC’s Coast Mountains.
After evaluating a few options, by 1962 they had more or less decided upon Whistler Mountain (still officially named London Mountain at the time). The mountain was essentially a clean slate (aside from some rather intensive logging around the mountain’s base) from which they had to design a world-class ski area.
Today, most skiers’ understanding of the terrain develops through multiple seasons of exploring the mountains guided by trail markers, instructors, more experienced friends, and pure instinct, leading them to have a virtual trail map etched into their minds. When a big powder day hits, they already know exactly where they want to be.
But without these aids, identifying the best terrain and chairlift configuration was a completely different challenge. The group of Vancouver and Montreal-based businessmen knew enough to admit that they didn’t know much about ski area-design, so they hired German-American ski champion, coach, and resort-design consultant Willy Schaeffler to offer his insights.
Schaefller was born in the Bavarian Alps and was skiing by the age of 2. Injuries, then World War 2 prevented him from representing Germany at the Winter Olympics, but he eventually moved to North America where he became a renowned skier, coach, and resort planner. It was his design work at Squaw Valley, host of the highly successful 1960 Winter Olympics, that secured him the consultancy gig at Whistler Mountain.
Schaeffler made several trips up to Whistler in the early 1960s, each leaving him more impressed by the mountain’s terrain and resort potential.
Future Whistler Mountain President Franz Wilhelmsen, and ski resort consultant Willy Schaefler, get ready to explore the London (Whistler) Mountain Alpine.
His 1962 report is prescient, if fairly straightforward from today’s perspective. He foresaw the mountain’s potential to revolutionize North America ski resorts with its deep, consistent snowpack, massive vertical and acreage, high-alpine skiing, and plenty of suitable terrain for all ability levels. Add in the accessibility to a large market, and Schaeffler considered it a no-brainer.
We’ll go into more details about Schaeffler’s report next week. For now, we want to focus on some of the photos in our archives from early on in this planning and design phase. Franz Wilhelmsen and Willy toured Whistler Mountain by helicopter and on foot in July 1962, and you can see the first traces of a plan to develop the mountain coming together through these images.
While it was clear that they had found a special ski mountain, their initial vision wasn’t exactly how things turned out. A central aspect of their plan was a lower shoulder of Whistler Peak which they found to be an excellent viewpoint and a suitable location for the top-station of an alpine chairlift.
View from the Air Jordan lookout to “Bowl #1” better known today as Glacier Bowl.
Coincidentally, the viewpoint is pretty much right on top of the infamous “Air Jordan” double cliff, which drew headlines last winter with Julian Carr’s massive front flip down the entire face. That wasn’t part of Schaeffler’s plan, but we think he would approve whole-heartedly of such boundary-pushing endeavours.
View from the Air Jordan lookout to “Bowl #2” better known today as Whister Bowl.
These images provide some pretty remarkable insights into this initial encounter, when Whistler Mountain made its first impressions on these passionate skiers and developers. In a few weeks we will look at the written report in more detail, as these first impressions developed into a comprehensive plan.
While writing last week’s post about Okanagan Helicopters, we realized that we hadn’t posted anything about “Diamond Jim” McConkey yet. We couldn’t let that injustice continue, so, here you go.
Jim McConkey was the ski school star of early Whistler Mountain. With a magnetic personality and his shock of white hair — “Diamond Jim” is a Whistler legend. McConkey had already had a long and distinguished career in the ski business when, in 1968, Franz Wilhelmsen sent Hugh Smythe and Jack Bright to ask him to be Whistler’s new Ski Director.
Jim McConkey posing for a formal staff photo in his Whistler Ski School uniform.
McConkey had always had an interest in Whistler Mountain and had heard good reports through the ski industry grapevine. The expanding Vancouver population, the long ski season and new road access all pointed towards success.
In the spring of 1968 he took a chance, moved to Whistler, and invested all his money in building a ski shop there. The new building was 20 feet by 50 feet, with two floors — rentals downstairs with a little office, and retail upstairs and the office for the ski school.
The classic image of Whistler Mountain General Manager Jack Bright (left) skiing Whistler with “Diamond Jim” McConkey. Photo taken ca. before toques were invented (1972, actually).
In an interview the Museum conducted with McConkey in 2010 he recalled:
In those days we used to have snow early. If we didn’t have snow by Nov. 11, we were kind of worried. The first year I had invested all my money in the ski shop and set it all up, Christmas came, and it was freezing cold, and there was a guy who was in charge of the hydro thing. He was a wonderful guy, but I don’t know if he got drunk or whatever it was, but the hydro was run by a couple railway cars down in Mons … and it went out. There was no power to run anything. And the lifts of course were shut down. No gondola, no nothing.
That was at Christmas time, my first winter, after I had gambled everything, and everybody left. People were getting on the trains going, ‘for the love of God, get me on that train!’ They were going and the place became deserted and the floors at Cheakamus Lodge had ice about six inches thick on them and it was closed for six weeks. No business in ski school, but people came up and we survived, and we had unbelievable skiing.
Although that first year was a bit hair-raising, McConkey’s decision to come to Whistler turned out to be a good one. New technology in skiing equipment meant more people were taking up skiing, and consequently there was a great market for instructing. Jim managed the ski school until 1980 and the rental and retail operations until 1985.
Before his time in Whistler, McConkey made a name for himself as an early ski film star. Here he is (at right) enjoying some of Alta, Utah’s famous champagne pow.
Whistler Mountain honoured Jim by naming a run after him (McConkey’s) on Dec. 15, 1994 — the same day that the Harmony Express chairlift was opened. This was clearly not enough for some, as there is also an unofficial McConkey’s on Whistler Mountain — a large unpatrolled area near the Peak to Creek.
A true fun-lover with an infectious joy for mountain life — McConkey’s catchphrase “Every day’s a bonus” is one we can all learn from.
