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Letter to the Editor: There are solutions to gondola issue and the COVID-19 vaccine

'I’m hopeful that a bit of leadership and creativity emerge to find a balance in this complicated moment'
skiing at whistler blackcomb
As ski season in Whistler kicks off, there are several creative solutions to the gondola/proof of vaccine debacle, writes a Whistler local in a letter to the editor.

As the ski season begins, and a new COVID-19 variant emerges, the debate in Whistler rages on around vaccines and gondola access.

Many of the letters to Pique have focused on Vail Resorts and its motivations. Vail Resorts is a monolithic company that runs on operational consistency. Vail Resorts wants everything to be the same everywhere—whether it’s the technology to scan a lift pass, the daily email to staff, or the size of a coffee.

Vail Resorts communicated its COVID-19 policy early on—and said that masks would not be required for chairlifts or gondolas— except where required by “federal and local health orders.”

In the five years since Vail Resorts purchased Whistler Blackcomb, Vail Resorts management and its board of directors have not empowered anyone at Whistler, so it’s logical that the Whistler COVID-19 policy would be consistent with other Vail Resorts [properties].

A more surprising question is what and who is the B.C. government optimizing for with its policy? And why are [public health officer] Dr. Bonnie Henry and [Sea to Sky medical health officer] Dr. John Harding defending a different approach than other global governments in trying to prevent a third consecutive shutdown in the mountains?

All international travellers need to be vaccinated and take a PCR test to enter Canada. All domestic travellers need to be vaccinated to fly within Canada. Everyone who works at Whistler Blackcomb needs to be vaccinated. Ninety per cent of the local Whistler community is vaccinated. So, who is the current policy protecting and supporting?

Even more puzzling is that there are several creative solutions that could address the concern on gondolas and still allow access to the mountain:

  • Require a vaccine to upload any gondola but let people who are unvaccinated upload Fitz and ski Whistler
  • Require a vaccine to upload any gondola (Whistler, Blackcomb, Excalibur), but let unvaccinated people ride all the chairlifts and the Peak 2 Peak.
  • Create rapid-testing stations at the base of both Whistler and Blackcomb, such that anyone who is not vaccinated could take a daily test before uploading the gondola.

A gondola is a “crowded space with poor ventilation,” which all the data says can lead to high rate of transmission. The lift staff cannot enforce mask rules on loading, let alone when someone is mid-ride (or when the gondola stops), and they decide to pull their mask down. And it’s not fair to ask people who are worried about COVID-19 to bear the responsibility to enforce the policy when they are in a gondola with people who share different views.

The first few days of the ski season confirm that gondolas contain vaccinated and unvaccinated people, who are masked and unmasked, with different qualities of masks.

The community is struggling with the inconsistency of the current policies. On almost every level, the federal and provincial government are taking significant steps to protect the health of locals and visitors. There is some incremental risk in allowing unvaccinated and unmasked people to ride the gondola. After experiencing two consecutive early closures, the plan to manage and mitigate these risks is not clear, and the explanations to date conflict with everything we have learned over the last 18 months.

There are a wide range of solutions that allow people who are vaccinated to feel safe, and people who have decided not to get a vaccine to access the mountain. I’m hopeful that a bit of leadership and creativity emerge to find a balance in this complicated moment.

Brad Goldberg // Whistler