Tag: Hugh Smythe

Building a Fortress: Part IIBuilding a Fortress: Part II

July 22, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

When Lynn and Dave Mathews and Hugh Smythe arrived at Snowridge in September 1974, the Albertan ski area was not in the best shape (find out more about how they ended up there here). The lifts had stopped operating following the 1970/71 ski season and the lodge building was described as “just a total disaster.” The three were there to reopen the ski area and make it saleable, which meant that they had until the beginning of the ski season in December to turn it into a going concern.

There was a lot to get done in a short amount of time and in an oral history interview Hugh looked back at this time as “drinking from a fire hose, to say the least.” The trio were taking on all of the operations of the ski area, including the lifts, ski school, retail, hotel, restaurant, and more. According to Hugh, this experience was where he got his “MBA in ski management by trial by fire.”

The 7th Heaven T-bar installed on Blackcomb Mountain in 1985 was originally a lift from Fortress Mountain. Greg Griffith Collection.

The cable of the chairlift at Snowridge had been blown off the tower and chairs were lying on the ground. Doppelmayr took on the refurbishment of the lift and Snowridge’s two T-bars (they were, after all, Doppelmayr lifts), marking the beginning of a long relationship between Doppelmayr and Hugh.

Birds had been searching for larva in the wooden siding of the lodge and other animals had been making themselves at home inside. Designed by Calgary architect Joseph K. English, guest services, retail and rental space, hotel accommodations, and food services were all included in one unique building. According to Lynn, it featured a “big copper fireplace going up three floors” and had a confusing layout. She recalled at one point seeing Hugh on the second floor and asking, “How did you get there?” His reply was, “I don’t know.” Though Dave referred to the building as a “Monument to Insanity,” they soon learned their way around.

In 2023, someone filmed their walk-through of the abandoned lodge and included some historical images of it in its heyday. The lodge is no longer accessible and is reportedly slated for demolition.

In order to open a ski area in three months, Lynn, Dave and Hugh did not come along and some familiar faces from Whistler Mountain came to work with them at Snowridge. Little Mary, who had been known for her cinnamon buns at Whistler, joined them in the cafeteria. Roger and Jan Systad, who had both worked at the Cheakamus Inn, came as well, Roger as the restaurant’s chef and Jan to run some of the hotel operations. Rich Miller was their electrician and John Garrity was in charge of maintenance. Munro Pickering, who had been a lift operator for the Green Chair, was in charge of the lift crew. Though not from the Whistler area, Hugh’s high school friend Garry Davies was also hired to create the new trail signs.

Like many of those who went to Fortress, Rich Miller returned to Whistler in the 1970s. (L-R) Drew Meredith, Jack Greenwood and Rich Miller pose in the midst of official Chamber of Commerce business. Whistler Question Collection

With a lot of work and long days, the ski area was ready to open by December 1974. They renamed the operation Fortress Mountain and branded themselves as “Alberta’s Friendly Mountain.” To that end, they hired high school kids to work on the weekends who they bused in and would have stay at Fortress Friday and Saturday nights. Fortress also employed over 40 full-time staff who lived at the ski area. As the managers, one of Dave, Lynn or Hugh was always on duty. Looking back, Lynn recalled going to bed at 4 am and then getting back up to work at 11am, remembering “I have never worked so hard in my life.”

Fortress had turned around by the spring of 1975 and was operating successfully. All that was left for HUMAT Management and Consultants Ltd. was to sell the ski resort for the Federal Business Development Bank.

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Building a Fortress: Part IBuilding a Fortress: Part I

July 15, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

In 1974, a closed ski hill in Alberta developed a surprising number of connections to the Whistler area.

Snowridge Ski Resort opened in Kananaskis County in 1968 as a family ski area. A daylodge designed by Joseph K. English had been constructed the previous summer and included hotel rooms, a restaurant, and a cafeteria that could seat up to 300. Two t-bars and a chairlift had also been installed and Snowridge advertised “acres of exotic powder and undulating packed runs.” Located along the gravel and rarely-plowed Kananaskis-Coleman Forestry Road, it wasn’t the easiest to access, but it was close enough to Calgary to attract skiers, many of whom would come for the day.

Snowridge closed at the end of the 1970/71 ski season and didn’t reopen. In 1973, the bank foreclosed on its mortgages and Snowridge declared bankruptcy and was put up for judicial sale by the Federal Business Development Bank (FBDB; then called the Industrial Development Bank. That same year, construction began on Highway 40, which would have provided more consistent access to the ski hill. By 1974, Snowridge was still for sale.

Patrol at the top of the Red Chair in 1967, years before Hugh Smythe moved to Snowridge. Photo courtesy of Cliff Jennings

Over in British Columbia, Hugh Smythe took the summer of 1974 off from Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. and took a trip to Alberta. On his trip, he stopped at Fairmont Hot Springs and visited with the owners, the Wilder family. The Wilders were interested in purchasing Snowridge and Hugh decided to go take a look. According to an oral history interview with Hugh, he thought, “Maybe this is something that could be intriguing” and he was still thinking about Snowridge when he returned to work at Whistler Mountain in August.

Dave Mathews was operations manager for Whistler Mountain at the time and so was Hugh’s boss. Not wanting to take on “a derelict ski area” alone, Hugh talked to Dave about his interest in Snowridge and they and Dave’s wife Lynn formed HUMAT Management and Consultants Ltd. They didn’t have the financing to purchase Snowridge, so Hugh and Dave approached the FBDB. Though they didn’t really expect that their pitch would go anywhere, they were contracted to get the ski area up and running and turn it into a saleable prospect. That September, Hugh, Lynn and Dave left their jobs at the lift company and moved to Snowridge, along with the Mathews’ two small children.

As Lynn was the editor of the Garibaldi’s Whistler News during her time at Garibaldi Lifts Ltd., the Mathews children sometimes featured in promotional photos such as this one. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection

According to Lynn, she and Dave had sold some properties in Whistler and had a bit of money put by and so were open to taking on something new. Hugh was interested in learning more about the operation of a ski area. Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. is often described as being “in the uphill transportation business.” They ran the lifts on Whistler Mountain and looked after the grooming and patrolling while the food operations, ski school and ski shop were contracted out. At Snowridge, they had the opportunity to “do all of it,” from running the lifts to running a hotel, restaurant, bar, ski school, and rental and retail shop. As Hugh recalled, “I felt that’s something that I really wanted to get involved with, was all of the aspects of running a resort.”

Upon arrival, Hugh and the Mathews were confronted with a chairlift whose cable had been blown off the towers and whose chairs were lying on the ground and a hotel that was “just a total disaster.” It was already snowing in the first week of September and the area needed to be operational by December. Keep reading next week for tales of their efforts and some more familiar faces from Whistler Mountain.

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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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Dining on the Mile High MountainDining on the Mile High Mountain

December 20, 2022 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

The smell of fresh doughnuts, french fries made from scratch, and fine dining on the mountain top. Baked goods, including those giant cookies, sandwiches and hot food worth freezing for; Blackcomb Mountain took on-mountain dining in the 1980s and stepped it up a notch.

When they opened in 1980, Blackcomb had a real focus on hospitality, making guests comfortable to encourage return visits. Before Merlin’s or Crystal or Glacier Lodge, you may remember dining at the cafeteria at Base 2, the original base of Blackcomb, or the Rendezvous Lodge.

The original daylodge on Blackcomb was located in the area now known as Base 2. Whistler Question Collection.

The Parsons family were the first concessionaires on Blackcomb, opening these venues with the opening of the new mountain. Chris Leighton (née Parsons), her brother Steve, and their mum Lee were the brains and brawn behind the impressive operation. The Parsons family had the food business in their blood. In 1929, Chris’ grandfather had opened Jimmy’s Lunch at the PNE, which is still run by the family to this day. Christine’s father, Bob Parsons, also had a food stall that travelled the carnival circuit every year from May to October. He would be on the road all summer, then could spend the winter in the mountains, skiing with family and volunteering with Whistler Mountain Ski Club. Sadly Bob passed away in 1979, one year before his family opened the food services on Blackcomb.

The top of Blackcomb looked a little different when Rendezvous Lodge first opened. Whistler Question Collection.

When the cafeteria and Rendezvous opened, the cafeteria had a large preparation space and much of the food was made at the base and then transported up the mountain either by snowcat or by foot based on the amount of snow at the base. Unfortunately for Blackcomb, the first year of operation was a terrible snow year. There were three lifts to get up the mountain and they did not line up exactly, so food and supplies had to be skied from one lift to the next until they reached the snowcat. Inevitably, food would spill along the way.

Blackcomb hospitality staff. Blackcomb Mountain Collection.

Once there was enough snow, success was still not a given. Visitor numbers would come in at 11 am and when there was not a single guest on the mountain they closed for the day.

According to Chris, the direction from Aspen Ski Company and Hugh Smythe were, “’We don’t want to be like Whistler. We want to be better.’ Hugh would come through everyday and make sure the music wasn’t too loud and that it was expected that we were going to be bigger and better.”

Customer service training for Blackcomb staff. Whistler Question Collection.

When Blackcomb opened there were caretakers that lived at the top who were responsible for starting the doughnuts and fresh baking so wonderful smells welcomed the guests. The caretakers also put soups and chilli on to heat because regular staff could only upload 30 minutes before the mountain opened to the public.

While it is common to find vegetarian options on most menus today, in the 1980s it was quite unusual to have the choice of vegetarian or beef chilli which Blackcomb offered. Food was served on real crockery with real cutlery. They even flew a ‘fry guy’ over from England to train everyone in how to make french fries from scratch using a chipper.

Blackcomb food service staff, May 1983. Whistler Question Collection.

The food up Blackcomb during the Parsons’ reign is still raved about today. They went on to open Christine’s Restaurant, fine dining on top of the mountain named after Chris herself (much to her chagrin; Chris thought Wildflower or Lupin were better names but Hugh Smythe was adamant). Horstman Hut, Crystal Hut and Merlin’s were also opened during their time as concessionaires. After 10 years, and growing the staff from a daily requirement of around 10 to 100, the Parsons decided it was time for the next adventure and Blackcomb took over.

Some local faces enjoying Christine’s in the 1980s. Blackcomb Mountain Collection.
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