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“Imagine the day when there will be one lift queue at W/B for members of ‘the club’ and another for non-members.” Yo, Beaudry, the future is the past, dude.
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“Imagine the day when there will be one lift queue at W/B for members of ‘the club’ and another for non-members.” Yo, Beaudry, the future is the past, dude.

There are few things in life I enjoy more than a sunny patio, a refreshing beverage and a marathon rant with Michel Beaudry, Pique’s Alta States columnist. I can’t keep up with Michel on skis and, truth be told, can’t keep up with him on a rantpage but if two-man, tag-team ranting ever becomes an Olympic sport — c’mon, is that any more absurd than solo synchronized swimming? — I think he and I would be contendahs for gold medals, assuming the draconian anti-doping rules don’t extend to residual traces of alcohol and hops.

And as a professional courtesy, a one big happy family sort of rule, I don’t generally comment on what other Pique columnists toss out in the court of public opinion when I feel they’re either off the mark or, more likely, haven’t gone far enough… which is to say too far. But I believe Michel gunned for small game last week when he took aim at the proposed Whistler-Blackcomb Rich Peoples’ Club (RPC) and completely missed the elephant in the parlour. Forgive me, Michel; I’ll buy the next rounds.

The rich are just like you and me — okay, you — only different. And the Very Rich are different still from the simply rich, the difference being more than just capitalization of the non-monetary variety. With ownership of Intrawest having moved from the simply rich, Joe “I’m Canadian dammit” Houssian, to the Very — and quite possibly Filthy — Rich principals of Fortress, it’s only natural evolution that Whistler-Blackcomb would cast an envious eye toward Rich People of all modifying adjectives as a potential source of new revenue. After all, Very and Filthy Rich guys have pretty much sucked all the wealth and life out of working stiffs, government, middle management and po’ folk so who’s left to mine in the neverending quest for More?

But whether WB can line up enough insecure rich folks suffering from low self-esteem and an acute desire to remove themselves from all the impoverished ragamuffins who come here to ski and form a RPC is really beside the point. Ditto the Crown Land argument. The fact is, they’ve been doing it for years and there is truly a much more elitist “private” club(s) that have been chipping away at my skiing pleasure for years.

But before revealing the real scoundrels, let’s pause while our waiter refreshes our drinks and brings us a reality cheque. Skiing, and I don’t think this is revealing a trade secret, is pretty much all about catering to rich people. Okay, relatively rich people. Not polo rich but way richer than pickup basketball rich. And catering to rich, richer, richest has a long and glorious tradition in Tiny Town. Consider the following.

Back in the day, Christine’s in the Rendezvous was a blatant attempt to pander to Rich People. Table service, better food, crystal wine glasses. It was only through the humility of management that minions weren’t forced to prostrate themselves at the feet of hungry Rich People to remove their ski boots and slide their feet into silken slippers. Well, that and ski boot stink foot, which would surely put people off their lobster bisque.

Po’ folk park their tatty old SUVs in the day skier lots, some so far from the lifts they need to pack a lunch. Rich People pay a bargain price of a couple of hundred bucks a year and park along the wall next to the lift at Base II. The fact WB doesn’t offer these beleaguered Rich People valet parking is unmistakably a sign of management’s solidarity with the hoi polloi — love those Greeks.

If you don’t mind paying a couple of grand more for your season pass — and if you’re a bona fide Rich Person you don’t — you can step up to a Founder’s Pass. What’s the diff? It’s transferable, a trick that’ll get you busted if you try to do it with your garden variety season pass. But, as they say on late-night television, that’s not all; it lets you and three of your friends jump the proletariat-choked lift lines at the base of the mountains in the morning. How cool is that on opening day? And half its price is tax deductible.

As for jumping the queue at Peak Chair on a powder day, I have but two words which should be very familiar to you, Michel: Ski School. Oh sure, ski school isn’t the exclusive haunt of Rich People, but it has its privileges. And Club Linc is a semi-private club, limited in membership only by the availability of high-level instructors and coaches. Club Linc, the brainchild of Lincoln Phillips who built it from nothing into — don’t let this get out — the best weekend ski deal on the mountain, caters to people who spend all week single-mindedly making money and can only ski weekends. Meeting Saturdays throughout the season, they shamelessly lap Peak Chair on powder days and have a blast doing it. I know; I’ve joined them a time or two, palming myself off as a Rich Person-in-Training.

So really, who cares if WB carves out a corner of the Roundhouse, fills it with better chairs and servile staff and caters to the tender egos of Rich People. Hell, if it keeps ’em off the runs….

The sad fact is that for years there has been another group catered to in ways the rich can only dream about. A far more elitist group that have had their way on the mountains. Not satisfied with, say, their own abbreviated lineup at the lifts, these über elites have hordes of people work to satisfy their insatiable demands, people willing — or so they say — to work for absolutely no remuneration whatsoever!

They’re regularly offered exclusive swaths of the best runs on the mountain for their own pleasure, a pleasure they’re unwilling to share with even Rich People. Theirs is not a club you can join simply by throwing money around, though money you will most definitely need if you want to become one of them. Not only do they demand and receive prized mountain real estate for much of the ski season, not only will all the money in the world be insufficient to ski in their company, but they insist their Special Areas be fenced off to keep any of the rebellious masses from getting too close.

Yes, we’re talking about ski racers. A group who shamelessly thinks of themselves as and even in polite society calls themselves, Elite. A group money can’t buy, although the Own the Podium program is doing its best to try. A group that shanghaied the entirety of Creekside from the Dave Murray Downhill to Franz’s last season for almost a whole month and will completely close down that side of the mountain for the run of the Olympics.

And you’re worried about a handful of Rich People? The Dangerous Ones come in Spandex, Michel, not Bogner.