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A celebration in progress

From snowball fights to showdowns to uphill races and now theatre, G.D. Maxwell extols the evolution of the World Ski and Snowboard Festival continues

By G.D. Maxwell

All across the ski world there’s a common sound this time of year. It’s the sound of ski hills being closed for the season, mountain resorts winding down and segueing into the nether world of shoulder season, the slap of flip-flops replacing the clunk of ski boots.

The rituals of spring are being played out. Skis are being waxed and relegated to the space in closets recently abandoned by golf clubs. Roof racks that carried them are being swapped out for bike carriers and kayak holders. Light is replacing darkness just in time for sunglasses to carry the load goggles did all winter. Or so it seems.

And in Whistler, April has risen, Lent has passed and it’s time to get down and party one more time before last November’s instant locals take off for adventure, home, and the absolute certainty that life, wherever it plays out, won’t play quite as hard as it has since they first arrived, livers and savings intact, in the final weeks of… was it just last year?

So with three metres of snow still on the mountain, days that bounce between frigid and wilting, bank accounts and immune systems drained of reserves, what’s a Whistlerite to do? Hell, get down and party. It’s Festival time. Motto: Party in April; detox in May.

Tripping gracefully into adolescence — a state all too familiar to the aging population of this town — the TELUS World Ski and Snowboard Festival is getting ready to rock Whistler for the 12 th time, an anniversary few thought it would reach given its shaky start.

The story’s familiar by now, except to those celebrating their first installment of Festival Follies. Back in the dark ages, when Whistler pretty much celebrated April like most ski resorts, with a smattering of econotourists and hard-core locals who can never get too much of a good thing, Doug Perry was desperate to find some way to make a living out of doing what he loved most: skiing.

Having come to the grim realization that he had the grace and skill of a pro skier and the knees of a pro curler, Doug couldn’t reconcile himself to the usual options available to post-competitive skiers: ski instructor, ski bum, ski sales rep, ski bum, ski coach, ski bum. He figured why die a slow death when he could blow his brains with one Quixotic, ill-timed extravaganza. Thus was born the World Technical Skiing Championships... in April.

Boasting such traditional, crowd-pleasing events as speed skiing, powder 8s, freestyle and something called the Bigfoot Challenge, the festival was about as successful as most people kept telling him it would be, which is to say the Second Annual World Technical Skiing Championships seemed like a very, very long shot.

Ever mindful of the life-affirming joys of selling life insurance door-to-door, Doug and the festival limped along, teetering along that fine line between lunacy and outright stupidity. You see, the thing was the festival was a big hit right from the start with the people who mattered the most to Doug — the athletes who participated. They were stoked because finally, here was an event organizer who was not only asking them how they thought the competitions should be run, but was actually naive enough to let them set the rules.

Now, if this were Hollywood, that would have been enough for a happy ending. But this is Whistler, where good ideas and noble intentions melt away like snow in May. Had Doug hewn to his original vision, he’d have gone broke after year two and we’d be celebrating nothing more momentous than the third week of April right now.

But, in keeping with the whole Easter theme of holding an event in April, what happened next might be likened to a biblical visitation. If man — and festivalgoer — doesn’t live by bread alone, why should festivals try to live on a strict diet of sporting events… no matter how much bread is thrown at them?

“What this festival needs,” thought Doug, “is music. After all, music seems to be woven into everything else we do.” How insightful, I hear you smirk. Remember though, iPods hadn’t been invented yet.

So three years into the experiment, girl-about-town Kristen Robinson was tasked with making the festival rock. Given a good idea and an inadequate budget, Robinson plumbed the basement of the indie music scene and brought an unknown band to town from Hanna, Alberta, fronted by a guy she described as a “dead-ringer for Jesus,” a not altogether unwelcome visitor to a festival taking place during Easter week.

The band, Nickleback, was about to burst onto the national music scene and part of their strategy for making a breakthrough was volume… as in loud… as in very loud… as in many, many complaints. “We pretty much blew the budget sending flowers to the people staying in the condos around village square,” lamented Robinson.

But if the neighbours — not to mention the RCMP — hated the addition of music, the crowd ate it up. Suddenly the festival rocked and the centre of gravity began to vacillate between the on-mountain athletics and the in-village vibe. The magic was most definitely in the music and music was here to stay.

At least until the following year when there were serious doubts raised about whether the festival would be allowed to ever happen again. Ever!

The day was overcast and snowy. The crowd at the base of Whistler Mountain was ugly. Big and ugly. Sloan, the band on the mainstage — relocated to reduce the number of complaints about NOISE — was between sets. The snowboarders hucking big air were not jumping fast enough to keep a fever pitch lukewarm. The VIPs were sucking back complimentary alcohol and food and vipping each other on the nearby deck of the GLC. Westbeach, who was managing the event, were light in the security department. Did I mention the crowd was ugly? And big?

Idle hands and the devil’s work came together. No one knows for sure who threw the first snowball. For that matter, no one knows for sure who threw the ensuing 1,000 snowballs. The VIPs scurried for cover inside the restaurant, clutching cellphones and speed-dialing 911. The band abandoned the stage. Impossible as it seemed at the time, the crowd grew uglier. Security vanished like a fart in the wind.

Maybe it was that famous Whistler secondhand smoke or maybe everyone’s hands just got too cold to continue. No one knows that either. But the “near riot”, as it came to be called, caused everyone involved with the festival to take a sober second look. Apologies were made; contrition rendered. Security was beefed up and brought in-house, some events were toned down and everyone came away with a heightened appreciation of just how ugly a mob can be. The alternative was 86ing the festival and going back to sleepytime April, something no one wanted. After all, the party was just getting started.

The final — but by no means last — piece of the puzzle fell into place the next year. Got sports; got music; what’s missing. Casting about for the Next Big Thing that’d put the festival on solid footing, Doug had a brainstorm. Well, Doug with some help from his friends had an idea that, in retrospect, turned out to be a brainstorm.

“What this festival really needs,” they decided, “is a slide show.”

A what?

That’s right, a slide show. After all, the post-literate, all-pictures-all-the-time generation was spawning a genre of magazines without words and there were growing numbers of very talented photographers working hard to capture the insane antics of growing numbers of huckers for whom no cliff was a cliff too high. And, of course, there were all those exotic world locales from which to huck.

So local photophenom Eric Berger and the ever-interestingly coiffed Jack Turner joined forces to blow the minds of festival goers in the first ever Pro Photographer Showdown. Music met image met story and that spun the festival off into a whole new dimension of sight and sound.

Interestingly, that brings us right up to the present because Eric and Jack are back this year reprising the whole Iranian Excellent Adventure as featured performers at Words and Stories, itself a five-year-old addition to the ever-growing culture stew the festival’s become.

Not that TWSSF is in any way trending toward reruns. Hardly.

Since embracing photography as a toe-in-the-water dip into mountain culture, artistic events have grown to the point where they hold their own against athletics and music and draw a distinct audience not often seen at the other two.

Film joined photography when the Filmmaker’s Showdown debuted six years ago. A pressure cooker of an event, individuals and teams embark on a shotgun start, 72-hour quest to create an award-winning, 3-5 minute film that’ll capture the judges’ and audiences’ favour. Bucking the odds the event would be overshadowed by same-old, same-old softcore huck movies, the ever-creative filmmakers have largely tickled the imaginations of slack-jawed viewers by creating very original, funny, thought-provoking and highly enjoyable films that, by and large, have nothing whatsoever to do with skiing or snowboarding.

Visual arts events followed and, mirroring what’s been happening in the world of skiing softgoods, fashion appeared on the scene last year and takes an even bigger encore this year.

In a little over a decade, Whistler’s Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival has gone from life support to life-affirming. Often aped by other mountain resorts hoping to extend their seasons — and hoping no one notices the lack of snow — no one has yet hit on quite the combination of venue, events and alchemy. TWSSF is still the benchmark.

Which explains why, for instance, the festival is estimated to have generated in excess of 37 million loonies worth of economic activity for supernatural B.C. last year, including a direct spending impact on Whistler of $15+ million. Festival goers gifted local hoteliers with 24,000 room nights they wouldn’t have had, ate enough to keep every waiter in town hopping busy and drank several rivers of refreshing beverages. Not bad for 10 days in sleepy April.

This year’s festival is, not surprisingly, bigger than ever. All the usual suspects are back and last year’s surprise, back-to-roots event, the Movement Skis World Backcountry Freeride Jam is once again completing the circle by reminding us all — and giving those who’ve never had the experience a chance to discover — where this whole sliding down snowy mountains nonsense began. With uphill skiing, in case you didn’t know.

Conceived by Whistleratic and hardcore backcountry guy, Jayson Faulkner, the Jam is part race, part demo days and part get-out-there-and-try-it. “The heart and soul of the Backcountry Jam,” explains Jayson, “is the product demos we have set up at the top of the mountain at the North Face Backcountry Village. It gives people a chance to try out equipment they might never have tried: touring gear, tele equipment, climbing skins.”

Last year’s Jam included guided tours to — then unlifted — Piccolo, ski-kiting demos, the latest in touring boots and skis, camping food and the best damn ski race Whistler mountain has seen since Robbie Boyd won the World Cup Downhill in 1989.

The North Face Spearhead Passage was an epic, long-distance touring race. Logging 26 kilometres and gaining 2,150 metres of elevation, the race was held under sunny spring skies and, unbelievably, turned out to be a squeaker.

Andy Traslin from North Vancouver dogged Miki Knizka for 25.5 kilometres of the race, staying close behind but never taking the lead. They both crested the entrance to Glacier Bowl at about the same time and Andy made a strategic decision. While Miki stopped to remove his skins, Andy schussed the bowl with his skins on. It slowed him down but when he got to the bottom — where Miki was reapplying his skins — Andy kept on truckin’. After racing almost 2½ hours, he crossed the finish line EIGHT SECONDS ahead of a crestfallen Miki. That’s eight seconds over 26 kilometres. In downhill skiing terms, that’d be like two competitors finishing the race inside each other’s skin.

The race was good enough to be classed a “High Range International Classic” by the International Ski Mountaineering Committee, the body that oversees World Cup Ski Mountaineering events. Since you probably don’t know what that means, let’s just put it this way — there is only one other race in the world that’s earned that classification.

The big, serious race will be joined this year by the Whistler Wind Up, a race UP Whistler Mountain. Starting Saturday, April 21, racers will skin up the mountain from the village side and sprint to the Roundhouse. Shades of Franz Wilhelmsen and Stefan Ples.

With something for everyone — including the highly-acclaimed return of the Chairlift Revue to Whistler’s live theatre stage (shameless self-promotion) — this year’s TWSSF will be the first in the post-Perry world. Having been bought out by Whistler-Blackcomb and Tourism Whistler, the festival’s other two long time partners, Doug’s enjoying his first stress-free spring in over a decade.

But under the guiding hand of Sue Eckersley — who Doug always admitted really ran the show anyway — the transition’s been seamless. The only problem I’m aware of is my inability to come up with an appropriate sobriquet for Sue, Party Dudette just not cutting it. In fact, without Doug there to consult on decisions large and small, everything’s fallen into place ahead of schedule this year. But please don’t tell him that if you see him.

With a music lineup on the mainstage that includes reggae legend Toots and the Maytals, Montreal phenom Sam Roberts, Bob’s boy Stephen Marley and Burning Man mainstay Bassnectar, a larger and more over-the-top Fashion Exposed, the films, the photographs, two Big Airs, the Stompede, the If Ullr Was A Girl finals, Glen Plake anchoring Words and Stories and, did I mention, the triumphal return of the Chairlift Revue featuring Whistler’s own Short Skirt Theater Company, hell, where else would you rather be?

Nowhere, dude. Nowhere but here.



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