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A winter for growing

No snow in 76-77
1403blackcomb
Thirty years ago Blackcomb had little or no snow, photo by Francois Lepine.

By Francois Lepine

Thirty years ago this week (Jan. 15 th ) Whistler Mountain closed and remained closed for a month.

The 1976-77 ski season had started normally enough but in December a pineapple express came through and it rained heavily to 10,000 feet, then it turned clear and cold.

Whistler had no snowmaking of any kind. Up until then the mere mention of snowmaking usually brought chuckles to all who knew the mountain. In its 10 year history a lack of snow had never been a problem for “The powder snow capital of Canada”, as the young resort liked to bill itself. In fact the reverse was true. Snowstorms of epic proportions routinely closed the road to Squamish and often delayed lift openings for several hours or even a whole day.

The mountain tried valiantly to retain staff for the upcoming Christmas season but operated on a limited basis. Having a job did not necessarily mean that you had a paycheque. When snow did not materialize layoffs began and the crew got smaller and smaller.

Skiing was limited to the Green Chair and even then the bottom half was only kept open by fencing off the runs down the middle and moving all available snow from one side to the other, most of it by hand shoveling. Ski patrollers were all issued hockey sticks and told to ski around looking for “floaters” (loose rocks in the thin snow pack) and fire them off into the bush.

The only access back to midstation for the download to the valley each day was the Pony Trail, and keeping the bypass section of that run skiable was a challenge. Every night the cat crew hauled snow in trailers from the alpine and spent the entire night rebuilding it. Every afternoon after ski-out it looked like a rock garden.

To preserve this skiing surface for its crucial afternoon use, the Pony Trail was closed, fenced off and guarded every day until 2:30 p.m. The skiing conditions were rugged, to say the least. If you did not own a pair of “rock skis” you had one in a couple of days. Because of this, Diamond Jim was doing a booming business in the rental shop, but his brand new equipment was being destroyed at a furious rate. He could be seen at the top of the bypass everyday when it opened and would hail people on rental skis and tell them in no uncertain terms to take their/his skis off and walk down the rockiest section.

There were so few people skiing the second week in January that the Gondola crew started keeping track of paying customers on the blackboard by the load area. On Jan. 14 th a grand total of eight customers had uploaded. The mountain ceased operations the next day.

It seemed that everybody in town was unemployed, broke or going broke. The lineup for the one bus out of town grew every day as more and more ski bums gave up on the season or had to leave to keep eating. The weather stayed clear and very cold, with brilliant sunshine every day.

In December Alta Lake had frozen from shore to shore with clear, hard ice that would have been the envy of any ice arena manager. The locals went to the second-hand store in Squamish and cleaned it out of skates. The ice became the mountain for that month and everybody was on it every day. There were always multiple pick-up hockey games going on. People who lived on the lake hosted parties that spilled onto the lake and anybody that was still in town was welcome.

The skeleton crew that was left on Whistler Mountain had so little to do that a few guys decided to build an ice boat. Sporting a recycled cafeteria chair for a seat, angle iron cut and sharpened in the shop for skates, a 2X6 frame with an old Sabot mast and sail, this contraption would scream across the lake, propelled by the incessant north wind.

With everybody broke the social scene changed. The people that could still afford it hosted dinner parties and invited their laid-off co-workers or employees who they knew would appreciate a full meal. The dinner party culture grew and grew as even households that had very little money scraped together their resources and put on a dinner party of their own to repay all the invites they had taken advantage of.

The few bars and restaurants that were operating had to fight for the little business that was left. Jack Bright, who had just opened JB’s pub and restaurant that fall, lured customers in by offering dinner and a movie for the princely sum of six bucks.

Everybody that was still in town developed a common bond in the face of adversity and it lasted longer than that one season. Individuals who barely said hello to each other before became good friends playing hockey. Locals, who never skied on weekends, mixed with the weekenders on the ice for the first time. Older, established residents who only suffered the presence of ski bums as a necessary evil before — and certainly would never socialize with them — gained some respect for the ones that stuck it out and friendships across age groups developed that winter.

For all the talk about “community” in Whistler these days, if one were to ask when it all began, the winter of ’77 would be a pretty good answer.

Eventually it started snowing again, the mountain reopened on the 15 th of February and it kept snowing. The month of April saw record dumps of powder so light and dry we could have been in Utah…

Francois Lepine lived in Whistler from XX to YY. He now lives in Telegraph Cove.