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.