Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Going the distance - the Peak Bros. have The Answer

"You can write whatever you want [about those days] - because it's all true." "Bosco" Colebrook It was everything he'd expected it to be. An impossible, outlandish, unimaginable fantasy-come-true.

"You can write whatever you want [about those days] - because it's all true."

"Bosco" Colebrook

 

It was everything he'd expected it to be. An impossible, outlandish, unimaginable fantasy-come-true. After all, Whistler in 1979 was still a wild mountain town on the edge of nowhere. For the small band residents, the skiing was kick-ass to the max.

But it was more than just the skiing. Young people dominated the valley's affairs in those days. Authority was a long way downhill.  Imagine - the village hadn't been built yet. Back then Alta Lake was still the postal address. For better or worse, it was one of the last great ski bum redoubts in the west. And the people who lived it knew they were living something special.

"I shoudda moved up there earlier," says Gordy Rox, a near-dreamy tone overlaying his words. "To get to Whistler and realize it was even better than I expected - hell! It made me really wonder why I waited so long to get my butt up there..."

No matter. Roxy and his buddy So (Shawn Hughes) immediately set about making up for lost time. "I was a member of the '79 UIC Ski Team," says Gordy with just a hint of a smirk. "I skied every day that winter." He stops for a moment. Grins again. It's clear he's enjoying our talk. "Except of course," he continues, "when I'd hitchhike down to the city every two weeks to sign my unemployment cheque."

And to the obvious question: "No way man," he guffaws. "You couldn't get your cheques forwarded to Whistler. The authorities would know right away then..."

Gordy had always been into cartooning. As a young teenager he'd even created his own character, Paul K. Reefer. "I was a huge fan of the Freak Bros. and all the other so-called 'underground' comics of the 70s," he says. "You know, dope, music, sex..."

He laughs again. "They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well, the Freak Bros. came from the Marx Brothers. And the Peak Bros. just followed behind."

So how did it all begin? "A little while after I moved to Whistler, I heard about this new local magazine called The Answer ," recounts Gordy. "So I figured: 'Hey, I've gotta get hold of a copy.' And when I did - wow! I loved that bold hippie rag."

Quick review for those who need it: A hand-printed, irreverent, happy-go-lucky publication that sought to give voice to the valley's counter-culture, The Answer provided a quirky, offbeat (but intelligent) look at Whistler life in its early years.

And Gordy wanted in. That's when he decided he had to create a cartoon series for the new mag. "Duh!" he says. "That's when it came to me: The Peak Bros. - you know, a gang of local boys skiing around, getting high, having all this fun. Then the ski police start to chase them... and the trouble begins." The first cartoon, he says, was very crude. "It was drawn on the back of a Garibaldi Lifts logbook," he admits. "And it wasn't very well drawn at all."

But it didn't matter how crude (or rough) the drawing was. It worked. He sent his first strip to the boys (a.k.a. Charlie Doyle, Bosco and company) at The Answer - and voila, the Peak Bros. immediately became a part of Whistler lore.

"It's kind of strange," says their creator. "I didn't produce a lot of Peak Bros. ... comics - maybe 20 or so. And they're not all that good. But they grabbed people." He stops. Laughs. "I think they've infiltrated themselves into the hearts and minds of Old Whistlerites."

And why not? Walking a fine line between self-parody and caricature, the Peak Bros. expressed both the smugness of the early adopter and the angst of knowing that things were about to change in their mountain paradise. "In the end, we're all Peak Bros.," Gord maintains. "These are just the characters that represent us..."

Gordy hasn't lived in Whistler since 2003. Big deal. Whistler remains a huge part of his life. "I didn't realize how passionate people were for those ol' times until I put up my Facebook page featuring the Bros.," he explains. "Old Whistlerites just love that stuff. They want to hang out at the site and just reminisce about those years." He sighs. "That was a really magical time you know. We shared a very special moment." Another long pause. "I loved the period before the village was built. You know, when there were 500 people living in the valley. And you always knew where everyone was - at JB's, The Moose or L'Après."

But wait a minute. His UIC deal back in 1979 couldn't have sustained him for long. And his Peak Bros. comic strip certainly wasn't paying the bills. So how did he survive?

Funny you should ask, he says. "When my UIC finally expired," he starts, "Shawn and I lost the cabin we'd been renting." The solution? "We squatted by the River of Golden Dreams," he says, barely suppressing a chuckle. "We had a two-room tent - with a couch! The Boot Pub was our living room. And we bathed and washed in the river."

As the next winter approached, Gord realized he had no money for a pass. "At first I bribed the liftee to let me up the mountain," he says. And shrugs. "It was either bribe or work." But Gord couldn't sustain the bribery either. "I eventually caved in and went to see Doug Wash at Whistler Mountain. Suddenly I was a liftee!"

His stories of his stint on the old diesel-powered Green Chair are legion. Like: "If you missed getting off at the offload ramp," he remembers, "you'd crash into the wall behind the bull-wheel." A quick smile. "And there were more of those crashes than you might think. We called those folk our 'bull-wheel babies.'"

That summer, he tried to get a job with the on-mountain maintenance crew, but failed. "So I applied to the muni," he says. And laughs. "It was a lot smaller in those days though. Don Biggar worked there. Cliff Jennings was the manager. And me? I was hired as the one-man maintenance crew!"

Skiing was still foremost in Gordy's mind however. And as yet another winter approached, he started to feel a little tense about his current situation. "I had a 9-5, Monday-Friday job," he tells me. "And I really couldn't handle that. So I quit my muni job and went back to being a liftee." He lets a sad smile pass across his features. "I wonder what woudda happened if I'd stuck with the muni..."

No matter. He was back on the mountain and knew exactly where he wanted to work. "I picked the Olive Chair," he says of the decrepit two-person lift that shadowed the old gondola up Creekside. He thought it would be quiet there. No such luck. "We didn't get any snow that year," he moans, "and I spent the winter downloading people!" He stops for a breath. His humour returns quickly. "It was still pretty funny though - watching people trying to offload onto the Green Meanies at the bottom: hilarious!"

But his stint on the Olive Chair had convinced him of one thing. He'd had enough of lifts. "I still wanted to work on the mountain," he says. "So I applied to maintenance instead." Somehow, somebody in management decided that Gord (Rox) Harder had what it took to be a carpenter. "Yeah," he says, laughing. "They offered to put me through a four-year carpentry apprenticeship program at Pacific Vocational Institute in Vancouver. I got my carpenter's ticket and everything."

Gordy also set a new standard in the industry. "I became the first ski resort journeyman maintenance carpenter in North America," he says proudly. And laughs again. "At the vocational school, my fellow students would look at me and ask incredulously:' You work where?' They just couldn't believe what I was doing."

His new carpenter status, he says, led to a comfortable existence in Whistler. "I had so many adventures on that mountain. Me and my gal lived on top of Whistler for two years in the suite that Rocky, Rabbit and Pika made famous. I got to participate in Dave Murray's first and only adult downhill camp." He stops. Laughs. "Turns out," he says, "I was really good at crashing. And of course, there was Dusty's Last Stand in 2000 - another watershed moment in this valley's history..."

In all, Gordy Rox Harder spent 23 years as a mountain employee - from 1980 to 2003. But things started to go sideways for him much sooner than that. "By the mid-90s I'd already realized this place was not evolving in the direction I'd hoped," he says. "But I was too comfortable to do anything about it yet." Still....

By 2003 he'd finally had enough. "Couldn't work for Intrawest anymore," he says bluntly. "Couldn't live in Whistler anymore. It was time to cash out."

So - will the Peak Bros. ever return to Whistler? Will Gord ever come back? "I miss my friends," he admits. "I miss my mountain... the terrain. Somewhere deep down, you know, I still love the place." One last smile. "So who knows? Stranger things have happened."