This morning a funny thing happened. Having dutifully ridden first gondola up from Creekside with the usual rabid local crew, we’d scrambled out, clicked into our boards, and slid over to Red Chair only to find it… closed.
Maybe not closed like the day before when a Sword-of-Damacles icicle—hanging from the bullwheel housing directly above where skiers would pass—had to be knocked down before loading could commence. More like not functioning, as in the automatic gates that typically swing open to allow skiers and boarders through simply wouldn’t. The young girl manning the lift solo did her best—pushing buttons, twisting dials, and fiddling with everything she could fiddle with—but the gates remained shut. Phone consultation with a more knowledgeable echelon advised her to push, twist and fiddle some more. Nothing.
By now a Kentucky Snow Derby with hundreds of eager horses had accrued. There was loud grumbling in the back, but up front, where the gate’s dysfunction was clear, there was naught but laughter, jokes and good vibes. I was glad to be in that particular flow when, eventually, a maintenance dude from the nearby gondie office re-pushed, re-twisted, re-fiddled and declared the gate officially Out of Order. The short-term remedy for such a choke is to swing the gate out of the way to let the hordes through, but the hinge was frozen and it was difficult to get moving. That’s when our chair-to-be happily joined the lifties and, with eight of us pulling, moved the gate 90 degrees so we could all go skiing five minutes later than we might have. Problem solved.
These kinds of minor inconveniences happen at ski areas, particularly early season when bugs are being shaken out of a ton of moving parts, procedures and people, each of which is subject to forecasted weather and unforecasted mechanical whims. But here we were on a glorious day with the best start to the season in years and people were still finding reasons to complain about something that couldn’t have been foreseen and, in the event, was quickly rectified.
Sometimes it feels like we should all take a deep breath and check our privilege. And not just in good snow years, because the insta-complaining reminded me of the unjustified hubbub during last season’s somewhat different start.
Whether in whole or part, a “bad” winter is a bugbear that snow lovers around the globe must endure at some point—and with climate change more frequently. I’ve had a few, so here’s some advice on how to cope:
First, no matter how bad the snow is where you are, it’s worse—but also much better—elsewhere. Thus, employ mobility when possible to take the edge (haha) off your despair. Second, be patient. Sometimes snow comes early, other times late; only rarely does it fail to materialize and, in that event, see previous point. Third, trust your home resort to do everything in its power to make things work. Last winter was a case study in all three.
October has become weird here. Instead of the long-term pattern of rain down low and snow up high, we’ve had everything from heavy-but-short-lived valley snow, to preternatural warmth (a monthly average a full 10 C above normal) and drought that fooled trees and shrubs into retaining their leaves well into the new year, causing severe damage when the snow finally came. October 2023 saw rain but higher-than-usual freezing levels expected with El Niño, but unhelpful given the shit-ton of snow required to fill in the Whistler alpine’s boulder gardens.
November 2023’s metre of snowfall, still with high freezing levels, was half the average and far below the 2009-10 record of five metres when the mountains opened top-to-bottom weeks ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, the latter is the kind of memory that sticks in hopeful human minds not as the anomaly it represents, but the way it always was and should be. Thus, for those grousing about early conditions, park your expectations. The Pacific Ocean makes its own decisions and, in an age of rapidly warming climate and off-the-chart ocean temperatures, the only thing to expect is the unexpected.
Regardless, WB’s seasoned mountain-ops crew took it all in stride, making snow when they could and keeping the alpine faith when they couldn’t. Limited as it was, opening day was great; we were on snow and making turns—what more could you want? The next day was better. And so on after that as the mountain magicians worked their asses off to open new runs and terrain.
Snow-wise, December 2023 was 40 cm below average but most of it came late, so the season was truly on by January and most angst erased—despite below-average snowfall through February. March and April, however, were above average, with May also chiming in some boot-top pow. Ultimately, 2023-24 saw a not-too-shabby 10.2 metres of snow against the long-term annual average of 10.8—a number with far more stability than the monthly totals contributing to it. Thus, spring skiing in 2024 was spectacular. As indeed it was in 2023—almost exclusively due to the fastidious work of WB’s snowmakers, groomers and mountain ops.
Attitude is what makes a season. And if you commit to enjoying every day on its own terms no matter what, you’ll never have a bad one of either.
Leslie Anthony is a Whistler-based author, editor, biologist and bon vivant who has never met a mountain he didn’t like.
