Tag: Red Chair

Getting Ready for the 1973/74 SeasonGetting Ready for the 1973/74 Season

November 7, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

It’s not unusual, as we approach the reopening of the lifts each November, to hear conversations about the coming winter – what to expect, what will be new, and what will be different. In their Fall 1973 issue, Garibaldi’s Whistler News (GWN), the publication put out by Garibaldi Lifts Ltd., tried to anticipate such questions and provide some answers. So, what could could skiers (it would be another sixteen years before snowboarders were welcomed on Whistler) expect of Whistler Mountain fifty years ago?

GWN began with the announcement that all lift rates would remain the same as the previous season. This meant that an adult skier could expect to pay $155 for an annual pass (just over $1,000 when adjusted for inflation), while day rates ranged from $5 half to $7 weekend days. Annual passes could be purchased by cheque if accompanied by two passport size photographs or in person at the ticket office, where photographs for passes were taken free of charge. With this pass, skiers could access over twenty runs and eight lifts.

Garibaldi’s Whistler News was used to promote the ski area to potential skiers by sharing the good news and offerings of Whistler Mountain. Garibaldi’s Whistler News, Fall 1973

Skiers who were familiar with the terrain on Whistler Mountain would notice changes to some of the runs after a major summer works program. On Upper and Lower Franz’s, $10,000 had been spent widening over 2km from 15m to 45m. Blasting on the Downhill run had completed the leveling and grooming of certain pitches. Around the Green Chair, the lift line had been widened in anticipation of installing another parallel lift for the 1974/75 season. The lift company had also enlarged and upgraded the kitchen facilities at the Roundhouse, as well as installing a concrete floor.

For skiers who were new to the Whistler Mountain area, GWN provided a guide on “How to Handle a Big Mountain.” According to the guide, “Whistler is a huge, friendly, thoroughly enjoyable ski mountain, but for some skiers, seeing it for the first time, it’s overpowering,” and so they provided “hints” and tips to make it more approachable.

The view of the top of Whistler Mountain, sure to encourage skiers to visit. Garibaldi’s Whistler News, Fall 1973.

According to GWN, the first thing to do was to check the weather conditions on the weatherboard located next to the ticket office. Then, it was recommended that skiers familiarize themselves with the international trail marking signs to indicate the difficulty level of a run (the same green circle, blue square and black diamond that you’ll see today) before heading up the Gondola or Olive Chair to the Red or Orange Chairs. GWN suggested Whiskey Jack, Ego Bowl, Pony Trail, and Olympic Run as the first runs to try out, though those who headed down Olympic Run needed to check the bus schedules at the Information Booth to ensure they got a ride back to the lifts.

The guide also provided tips on where to eat lunch (the Roundhouse or L’Après, both owned by the lift company), where to find information on the mountain, and which runs to take at the end of the day. One piece of advice they included, which is often repeated today, was to “bear in mind that most ski accidents happen late in the day – so don’t take that last extra run when you’re tired.” While GWN didn’t instruct skiers to expect long lineups, bad traffic, or less than optimal conditions (not surprising in a publication intended to promote the ski area), experienced skiers would have known that those were possibilities.

Skiers in line to take the gondola up Whistler Mountain in the early 1970s. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection.

Those who head up Whistler Mountain this winter will find that a lot has changed over the past fifty seasons, from opening new facilities to merging with Blackcomb Mountain to adapting to changing weather conditions, and might even find some changes since last winter.

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Need a lift?Need a lift?

October 24, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

When Whistler Mountain opened for skiing during the winter of 1965/66, it had four lifts (one gondola, one chairlift, and two T-bars), all supplied by GMD Mueller of Switzerland. The company of Gerhard Mueller also won the contract to install the gondola and chairlift and two of his employees arrived in the area in the early summer of 1965. This past spring, Ed Schum, one of those two employees, came into the Whistler Museum and sat down with Cliff Jennings and our director Brad Nichols to share his memories of constructing Whistler Mountain’s first gondola and Red Chair.

Ed had already been planning to come to Canada with a friend when he saw an ad in a newspaper for technicians who would go to Canada to install ski lifts. He and fifteen other people were hired by Mueller, who hadn’t officially received the contract to install the lifts at Whistler yet. They worked for Mueller for about a year and a half before four were chosen to go to Canada. Ed and another man named Walter were sent to Whistler Mountain while two others were sent to install a gondola in Quebec.

The original gondola on Whistler Mountain. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection.

According to Ed, he and Walter arrived in Vancouver in mid-June and were flown up to the Whistler area by Quadra Construction, who built the foundations for the lifts. Ed fell in love with the area during that flight and predicted that he wouldn’t be going back to Switzerland after the job was done. Upon arriving at Alta Lake, they found the Whistler Mountain site was pretty much as it had been described to them by Mueller: a nice parking lot where the gondola station would go and then, up the mountain a little bit, “it gets really rough.” The pair went back to Vancouver to buy a truck and some tools, met with Franz Wilhelmsen and a couple of other directors of Garibaldi Lifts Ltd., and then drove back up the “highway” to start work while staying at Cypress Lodge.

There were pieces of tower all over the parking lot that they started assembling. They quickly discovered that the Swiss way of raising the towers wouldn’t work with the rough terrain and limited vehicle access (Ed estimated that it would take about eighteen months to put in the towers that way) and so Quadra Construction put them in touch with a pilot named Buzz at Okanagan Helicopters who had helped with the construction of the tower foundations. Together, they worked out the rigging needed and Buzz flew in the towers of the gondola and Red Chair. It took a day or two, a dozen sets of rigging, and “crews all over the place” to install over thirty towers for the two lifts, and Ed remembered that all of the flying was completed by his 24th birthday in early October.

Once the towers were installed, the gondola still required a cable and cars. A splicer came from a cable company in Vancouver to oversee the splicing of the Swiss cable, a process that required at least six people and very careful oversight. Both Ed and Cliff remembered an unexpected mishap when the heavy cable, still on its spool, broke the floor of the midstation, but the cable itself was unharmed. Additional workers were also hired to assemble the gondola cars, which were cheaper to transport in pieces.

The gondola still in use in December 1978. Whistler Question Collection, 1978.

Ed recalled that Walter went home once the lifts were running while he stayed to ensure that they continued to run smoothly. After the first season, it was decided that the gondola was too low in some places and some of the towers needed to be raised, which Ed took part in. When Mueller opened an office in British Columbia, Ed went to work there but would occasionally return to Whistler Mountain for maintenance work, where he worked closely with Doug Mansell who was in charge of the lift operations. As he predicted on that first flight, Ed ended up staying in the province, although the place and occupation changed over the years. The lifts he built remained on Whistler Mountain until 1991/92, when both the gondola and the original Red Chair were replaced.

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Expanding the RoundhouseExpanding the Roundhouse

September 12, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 2 Comments

The Roundhouse that sits atop Whistler Mountain today bears little resemblance to the original Roundhouse built during the summer of 1966. Based on the design of a similar building in the United States, the “round” structure is easily recognized in photographs from past decades. However, almost as soon as it was built, the lift company began changing and adding on to the Roundhouse.

The Roundhouse on Whistler Mountain, before the external additions. George Benjamin Collection.

Following its first season of operations, the lift company began construction of a warming hut to provide skiers with respite from the cold and snow. The Roundhouse featured a huge fireplace in the middle where skiers could warm their feet, though from stories we’ve heard at the Whistler Museum, only the first ring or two of people around the fire really got all that warm. The building was not designed to include food service or running water, though there were outhouses built on the hill below the Roundhouse.

The next summer, Hugh Smythe remembered being present when a dowser was used to locate water in order to install running water at the site. According to Smythe, the water was successfully found using a willow stick as a dowsing rod and a pump was sunk the next spring. The Roundhouse underwent quite a few changes over the next few years as the lift company removed the fireplace, added a kitchen, installed indoor toilets (though they kept the outhouses as well), dug out and enclosed a lower level, and even wired the building for electricity, installing a diesel generator in the basement (which was stolen one winter).

The Roundhouse under construction in September 1979. Whistler Question Collection, 1979.

The summer months were an opportunity to upgrade facilities on the mountain for the next ski season. During the summer of 1979, with the opening of Blackcomb Mountain for the 1980/81 season looming, there was a lot of work done, especially around the Roundhouse. Quadra Construction was employed to build a new building beside the Roundhouse that was to house extra washroom facilities, a new ski school office, a ski repair shop, and a sewer plant, topped off with a sun deck on the roof. Over the years, this building also housed a snack bar and Jim McConkey’s Alpine Ski Shop and became known as the Squarehouse. Quadra Construction also leveled the road that led up to the Roundhouse, raising the building eight feet without actually moving the building.

The view from the Roundhouse showing the new washroom building under construction in September 1979. Whistler Question Collection, 1979.

Other work done by the lift company that summer included seeding some runs and widening others, filling in gullies, cutting a new entrance to Green Acres, installing new engines on some of the chairlifts, and replace the original chairs of the Red Chair (the chairs were sold for $10 and marketing director John Creelman reported that they would “make a great conversation piece.”) At the gondola base in today’s Creekside, the bottom of the Olive Chair was remodeled, the Whistler Skiers’ Chapel was moved next to the Whistler Mountain Ski Club cabin, and L’Après and the cafeteria were renovated. According to lift company manager Peter Alder, all of these improvements and maintenance work came to over $1.5 million (adjusted for inflation, that would be about $5.9 million today).

The Roundhouse and the “Squarehouse” from the air during the 1980/81 season. Whistler Question Collection, 1980.

The new building at the Roundhouse was completed shortly after the 1979/80 ski season began. More changes were made to the Roundhouse area over the years, especially when the Whistler Express Gondola opened in 1988. In 1998, the Roundhouse Lodge was completely rebuilt, retaining the name of the structure but changing the shape.

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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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