Another year, another year of questions and answers!
In the 1980s the Whistler Question began posing a question to three to six people and publishing their responses under “Whistler’s Answers” (not to be confused with the Whistler Answer). Each week, we’ll be sharing one question and the answers given back in 1985. Please note, all names/answers/occupations/neighbourhoods represent information given to the Question at the time of publishing and do not necessarily reflect the person today.
Some context for this week’s question: On February 9, 1985, Whistler Mountain celebrated it’s 20th birthday (though the mountain did not open for skiing until January 1966, there was work being done on the ski hill from 1964) with a whole day of events. Learn more about the events here.
Question: Whistler is 20 years old. How does it feel?
Seppo Makinen – Logger (logged first ski runs) – Nesters
Really good. It’s nice to see. You know, I cut the first runs there. I started in April of 1964 and I had my tent set up just over there beside the timing hut (at the Gondola).
Franz Wilhelmsen – Whistler Mountain Founding President – Vancouver
I think it’s fantastic. It has fulfilled everyone’s wildest dreams I think, and I know the original board of directors is very pleased. No, there was never any apprehension, except perhaps when we couldn’t get the money at the start, but once it got rolling we knew it would work.
Stefan Ples – Retired (co-ordinated first construction) – Garibaldi Highlands
It’s progress – there’s still a lot of potential. We are still at the beginning – 14,000 people is nothing. It’s the same as Europe was 35 years ago – we had so few lifts compared to what there are now. It’s hardly started.
The events at Dusty’s are legendary; staff parties with the band playing from the roof, the celebration after Rob Boyd’s World Cup win in 1989, end of season parties, dressing up for theme nights, and scavenger hunts. Even amongst these events the opening and closing parties at Dusty’s stand out.
Dusty’s opened in 1983, after Whistler Mountain took over food and beverage on the mountain and redeveloped and rebranded L’Après. The massive opening celebration aimed to show off the new facility to the community, with a guest list stacked with ‘local dignitaries’ including Whistler Mountain and Blackcomb Mountain management, the RMOW, and local clergy.
Sue Clark serving cold drinks at Dusty’s. Whistler Mountain Collection.
Throughout the night the celebration ended up showing off a lot more than just the facility. As one version of this now-infamous event goes, right as the Reverend was blessing the new venue, Lady Godiva jumped ‘bareback’ onto the stuffed Dusty’s horse, shirt waving in the air like a lasso. With that, a legend was born and the new Whistler was open for business.
Dusty’s went on to become a popular spot for live music and a testing ground for up and coming entertainment, including the Poppy Family, and Doug and the Slugs. In 2000 it was announced that Creekside was to be redeveloped, including the demolition of Dusty’s. In honour of the incredible music scene, live music played each night in the week leading up to ‘Dusty’s Last Stand’ in April 2000.
Local rock band Foot in the Door at Dusty’s in 1984. Whistler Question Collection.
The final weekend brought with it a disco party, retro fashion show, a prize for the person with the most Whistler Mountain passes, and of course, more live music. Local favourites who took the Dusty’s stage ‘one last time’ included Guitar Doug, Steve Wright, Dark Star, Pete and Chad and the Whole Damn County, and the Hounds of Buskerville.
Starting early in the afternoon, the crowds built until servers were required to walk a hundred metres up the base of Whistler Mountain to deliver orders. Once the sun set, the eager crowd dispersed or relocated inside. With the saloon packed with over 2000 people it was a sight to be seen, the mosh pit and stage diving like no other. The crowd was so wild that management nearly stopped the last band from taking the stage. Even with the twenty additional security personnel brought in specifically for the event, it was still difficult to manage the crowd intent on sending Dusty’s out in style.
Crowds also spilled out of Dusty’s during Whistler Mountain’s 20th Anniversary Celebration. Local legend Seppo can be seen on the far left. Whistler Question Collection.
With so much of Whistler’s history made in L’Après and Dusty’s, everyone was encouraged to record their memories before and during the event. Those with particularly fond memories were stealing tables and chairs as souvenirs, and there were some arrests in the afternoon and evening, including a snowboarder carrying on the local tradition of celebrating sans clothing. Rumours had been swirling that people were planning on burning the building down before it could be demolished but thankfully the gas canisters were found outside before anything happened.
Despite these few hiccups, according to David Perry, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing for Whistler Blackcomb, “It was probably the best party this valley has ever seen”. For a party town like Whistler, that is a big call. Within hours of the party ending the area was fenced off for demolition.
The story of Dusty’s does not end there. Only eight months later the modern Dusty’s had it’s ‘grand re-opening’ and playing on the new stage was none other than Guitar Doug’s band, the Hairfarmers.
Now that Dusty’s has reopened for the winter season the Hairfarmers will again be gracing the stage on Tuesday and Saturday each week, continuing the live music tradition.
Do you have any photos of L’Après or Dusty’s? We would love to add to our archives!
To many, the photograph of a group posed around and on a rustic house is a familiar image of a different era in Whistler, when the nearest grocery store was often found in Squamish and only one mountain had any lifts operating. In 2011, Sarah Drewery, then the Collections Manager at the Whistler Museum, conducted an oral history with Andy and Bonnie Munster, and asked about the history of the house in the picture, which Andy called home for about five years in the 1970s.
The house before its demolition and eventual burning. Greg Griffith Collection.
Andy first came to Whistler in 1971 to ski. He had been expecting something bigger and drove straight through to Green Lake before realizing he had passed it. According to him, in his first four years in the area he ran into problems finding a place to rent and so in 1975 he and two friends, Randy and Dave, decided to squat and build their own cabin. Randy, who came from California, chose the site near Fitzsimmons Creek and decided that they didn’t want anything plastic in the house, preferring wood and natural materials. With little money to spare amongst them, the cabin was built almost entirely out of recycled materials.
Construction began in the spring or summer of 1975, often relying on what they could find in the dump. They found lumber that had been thrown away after another construction project finished their foundations, old fashioned windows that somebody no longer needed, and couches in pristine condition. Other items were donated by people they knew or sold to them cheaply, such as a cast iron cook stove and wood heater that Seppo Makinen sold to them for $20. Andy estimated that by the time they finished the house it cost a total of $50 and included an upstairs, a sunroom, a large woodshed, and an outhouse.
The house just before it was set alight. Whistler Question Collection.
The house was comfortable but keeping it running was a lot of work. All of the heating came from wood and each fall they would have to cut at least eight cords of firewood. Water had to be hauled from Fitzsimmons Creek in buckets, though in summer they could use a water wheel, and heated on the stove for showers and washing. Andy recalled that there were a few times when they decided not to have the wood stove on and then woke up with frost in their mustaches and beards. Luckily, the house was quick to warm up and stayed warm for quite a while.
In late 1978, most of the squatters on Crown land in Whistler were served with eviction notices. According to Andy they were shocked and seeing the notice “your heart kind of sinks down,” but they were able to meet with the provincial and municipal governments and negotiate a year’s extension. When it came time to leave the house, they gave away furniture, took out the windows and any reusable materials, and talked to the fire department about what to do with the shell.
In a speaker event last fall, Jim Moodie mentioned that, as part of the team managing the village construction, he was partly responsible for burning down Andy Munster’s home. The eviction notices were served around the time that the first ground was broken on the village site and, as Andy put it, “We were actually just moving out when the pile drivers and everything were starting in the village.” The shell of their house was used by the fire department for fire practice and, after trying a few different things, they let it burn to the ground.
The fire department controls the burning of the house while its inhabitants and friends look on. Whistler Question Collection.
The fire was documented in another series of photographs, depicting what many felt to be the end of an era. The next few years saw the construction of Whistler Village and the opening of Blackcomb Mountain not far from the site of that house, where Andy said if you were to walk past today “you’d never know it was there.”
There is an often told story of the first meeting of Stefan Ples and Franz Wilhelmsen of Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. on Whistler Mountain. Apparently Franz arrived at the top of the mountain by helicopter to find Stefan there on skis. Franz asked, “What are you doing on my mountain?”, to which Stefan replied, “What are you doing on mine?” Though we do not know exactly how their first meeting occurred, the story certainly demonstrates Stefan’s love of the mountain and his preferred way to navigate it. (For more information on Stefan’s life before coming to Alta Lake, check out last week’s article here.)
Stefan and Gerda Ples sit on their hearth at Alta Lake. Photo courtesy of Bareham family.
Although Stefan didn’t understand why people would prefer going up on lifts and skiing only a short distance down, he became greatly involved in the development of Whistler Mountain. By the mid 1960s he had been exploring the mountain on his skis for years and knew the are perhaps better than anyone at the time. Stefan began working for the lift company in 1963, going up to Alta Lake every weekend for over a year to climb up to a meadow at the bottom of the T-bar, where he would record the temperature and snowfall and other information (his handwritten reports were donated to the Whistler Museum & Archives by his daughter Renate Bareham in 2013).
When construction of the runs and lifts began Stefan moved up to Alta Lake full time to work. Part of his responsibilities was to bring the horses up the mountain with supplies to a work camp that was set up in what may have been the same meadows he gathered his reports from. Renate accompanied him on one of his trips up with the horses and told the museum, “It was just magical, because we went up through the forest and everything and we ended up in this meadow. Oh, it was so beautiful up there.”
During one particularly bad snow year, Stefan also introduced the sport of Ice Stock Sliding to the valley. “The old master, Stefan Ples, who introduced ice stock sliding to the Whistler area, sending one of the “rocks” down the recently blacktopped course next to the school at Whistler.” (Garibaldi Whistler News Fall 1977)
Though Gerda had continued to run their rooming house in Vancouver when Stefan first started working for the lift company, the rest of the family moved to Alta Lake in 1966. According to Renate, not many people lived in the area at the time, and those who did either worked for the lift company or worked construction around the gondola base. Renate attended high school in Squamish and worked for the lift company on the weekends and breaks. At fourteen she began by stapling lift tickets and then handing out boarding passes, moving on to teach skiing for Jim McConkey when she turned sixteen. She also babysat, caring for the Bright and Mathews children whose parents worked for the mountain.
Stefan continued working for the lift company and led ski tours to areas the lifts didn’t access. One summer Renate even remembered helping him paint the top of the Red Chair. Despite working for the lift company and receiving a lifetime pass in 1980, Stefan continued to prefer walking up, occasionally taking a lift as far as midstation before beginning his climb.
According to Renate, the only person who could go up the mountain on skis faster than her father was Seppo Makinen: “It took my dad three hours, probably, to get to the peak. Seppo made it in an hour and a half. I think he actually ran, you know, on his cross country skis, and my dad walked on his cross country skis, but Seppo ran. He was also considerably younger than my father.”
Stefan Ples, long-time resident of Whistler, receives a lifetime pass from Garibaldi Lifts President Franz Wilhelmsen in recognition of his long involvement with Whistler Mountain. Whistler Question Collection, 1980.
Parts of Stefan’s legacy can be seen throughout the area though many may not know of his role in creating it, from the Tyrol Lodge to the two runs off Whistler Peak that bear his name (Stefan’s Chute and Stefan’s Salute). He was a founding member of the Alta Lake Volunteer Fire Department in the 1960s and helped start Whistler’s first Search and Rescue Team in 1973. His name can also be found on the Stefan Ples trophy, the prize for the overall winners of the Peak to Valley Race, as he like to climb to the peak and then ski all the way down.
Though some people may come to Whistler to build a career or make it rich, Renate said of her father that, “All he wanted to do was be in the mountains,” a goal it would appear he certainly accomplished.
