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Mountain memories

Reflections and recollections from 40 years of skiing in Whistler

Twenty-five years ago this month Blackcomb Mountain began operations, and 40 years ago this winter Whistler Mountain opened to skiers. A lot of memories forged in that time, and many will undoubtedly be shared this weekend when Whistler-Blackcomb hosts a celebration of the two anniversaries on Whistler Mountain.

Pique reporters Alison Taylor and Vivian Moreau talked to a few long-time Whistler residents this week to ask them to share some of their memories from the mountains.

Ken Melamed

It was February 1976. A fresh-faced twenty-something Ken Melamed had landed in Whistler for the first time, pulling into town in his two-toned blue and white VW van called "Vanessa."

He came to see for himself if the rumours he had heard in Jasper where true – that in the Coast Mountain range in B.C. there was a little-known place where the powder abounded.

The mountain, there was only one back then, made life easy for young ski bums. Pretty soon Melamed had a job as a lift operator on the Orange Chair. He was living in "the ghetto" paying a dollar a night for his board, which was docked directly from his pay. Likewise, another dollar a day came off his pay for a meal plan. Life was pretty good.

Making it even better was the snow. In February 1976 it was relentless. It was snowing so hard that Melamed vividly remembers two Whistler employees doing laps of his chair down Goat’s Gully and by the time they rode up the chair, their tracks had filled in again. The young liftie remembers his sheer amazement to see guys getting fresh tracks at every lap.

During that February storm the upper mountain didn’t open. So for three weeks young Melamed thought the top of the Red Chair was simply the top of the mountain. Just imagine his surprise when the storm broke and he realized how much more there was to discover on Whistler.

"I just couldn’t believe where I was," recalled Melamed, who was just elected Whistler’s mayor last month.

The rumours heard in Jasper had turned out to be true. And after seeing the top of the mountain, Melamed never looked east again.

Colin Pitt-Taylor

Even in 1974, when hardly a soul dotted Whistler Mountain by today’s standards, the lure of the backcountry still beckoned any powder hound worth his or her salt.

Chef Manager at the Cheakamus Inn Colin Pitt-Taylor was one such powder hound, and along with four friends he set off on an overnight mountain journey that still stirs his soul some 30 years later.

It began at the Whistler gondola – the only Whistler gondola then – in Creekside. From there, the longhaired Pitt-Taylor and friends took the Red Chair and began their hike from the top of the T-Bars, over Little Whistler. Next came the Musical Bumps, Piccolo, Flute and Oboe, down Singing Pass and up to the rustic cabin at Russet Lake, a familiar summer haunt.

It was 5 p.m. by the time they arrived. They settled down to a dinner of cold lasagna and wine and tried to get some shut-eye. Five hours later in the light of the full moon, they awoke.

"It was a beautiful night for hiking," recalled Pitt-Taylor.

Off they set and four hours later they were at the top of Whirlwind, caught high in the sky during that special hour as the night faded to dawn. Soon the sun was up.

What followed was 20 minutes of perfect powder turns.

Exhausted, elated Pitt-Taylor and friends headed home down Singing Pass, which spit them out at the dump, now Whistler Village.

They hitched back to Creekside in time for their 3 p.m. shift at the Cheakamus Inn.

Pitt-Taylor, who came to Whistler in 1971 after hearing whisperings about this place, said he never let the big secret of Whistler slip.

"I never told anybody about it," he maintained. "But I guess other people did!"

Hugh Smythe

New Year’s Day, 1966. Hugh Smythe was an 18-year-old volunteer ski patroller loading sand bags on the chairs to test the new lifts. The mountain was preparing to open and the weight tests were one of the last tasks to complete. Smythe doesn’t remember what the weather was like that day but he does remember the disappointment when the lifts failed the tests and one of the towers fell into nearby Gondola Creek.

"The opening had to be delayed a month while another tower was brought in," Smythe said this week from his Intrawest office.

Garry Watson

Former Whistler councilor Garry Watson also remembers the winter of 1966. Although he’d been hiking the area since the early 1960s, that winter he could ride the red chair to the midsection before it officially opened. Still under construction, he could only ride the chair if he carried some 2x4s across his lap to the workers up above.

Watson says he also remembers his first night in his cabin near the Alpine Villas. Newly married and with a baby son, Watson said the cabin had no running water or heat. But that November night they saw flames shooting up from behind the trees in front of the cabin.

"It was the first block of Alpine Villas burning down," he said from his Boulder Ridge home. "Volunteers were manning a water pump filling buckets of water – it was terrifying."

Jinny Ladner

In the summer of ’66 when teenagers across the country were soaking in the summer sun, 12-year-old Jinny Ladner was at ski camp.

Specifically, she was at the first summer ski camp on Whistler Mountain, along with 40 or so other kids in their early teens.

Ladner’s dad was an early investor in the mountain and the kids had been told that they were coming to Whistler on the weekends whether they liked it or not.

Their days began early up the gondola at Creekside, followed by the slow ride up the Red Chair and then a hike to the T-Bar bowl. That’s where the camps took place.

"It was hot, hot, hot!" laughed Ladner.

The summer snow was pock marked and dotted with red algae.

There were no groomers backed then so the kids skied over the area until it was nicely packed down and smooth.

The morning ski lessons were followed by afternoons waterskiing on Nita and Alta Lakes, picnics under the trees and horseback riding.

There was no one else here in the carefree summer days, save for a few fishermen on the other side of the lakes.

The boys bedded down in the Highland Lodge, the girls across the way at the Cheakamus Inn.

Little did they know it then but these kids were the pioneers paving the way for thousands of kids who would hone their skills at ski camps on Whistler Mountain.

A few years later ski champion Toni Sailer took over the summer camps, and in the early ’80s Olympian and Crazy Canuck Dave Murray took the camps to a whole new level. They are still operating to this day.

Andy Munster

If you’ve ever spent long minutes waiting in a lift line, watching as skiers poach all YOUR lines, then you’ve had that dream of having the mountain all to yourself.

In the dream it’s just you, your friends, and wide expanses of powder, peppered with tight trees.

That’s just what Andy Munster had in 1978 before there were any runs cut on Blackcomb Mountain.

As the planning got underway to develop Blackcomb Mountain, Munster and friends approached Hugh Smythe at his office in White Gold for permission to take their 16-passenger snowcat up Blackcomb.

That old 1955 Tucker snowcat, a remnant from the defunct Rainbow Mountain ski hill in between Alpine Meadows and Emerald Estates, was permanently parked in Munster’s backyard along Fitzsimmons Creek.

It was there that Munster and friends had set up their squat, built at a cost of $50 with materials scavenged for the most part from the dump. In between the hours spent collecting firewood, stoking the wood-burning cook stoves, and doing the washing in buckets, there was still some time to play.

That snowcat was their ticket to the backcountry, faithfully taking them on adventures around the valley.

Smythe agreed to let them have their fun on Blackcomb.

Sure that old snowcat broke down several times along the way and the skiers were forced to make quick patch jobs. But the flip side was a mountain to call their own, even if it was for just a moment in time.

"It was well worth it," said Munster this week. "The skiing was fantastic."

Cathy Jewett

For veteran pro patroller Cathy Jewett there are so many memories from her 30 years working on the mountains. To Jewett, one of the first female patrollers, the mountains are intrinsically tied with the people who have come and gone from their slopes over the years. From co-workers and ski legends to the true pioneers and her friends, her memories are linked to the people who have coloured her working life.

"There are so many moments," she said a little wistfully. "For me it’s the people."

As a young female patroller, Jewett specifically remembers the first McConkey’s Cup. Unlike today where there are race series on the mountains every week, the first McConkey’s Cup was the first of its kind. It was a true locals race, made up mostly of staff. Jim McConkey, the beloved ski school director, handed out the awards, opening said Jewett with his favourite expression: "Every day’s a bonus."

He then went on to recite the Robert Service poem The Shooting of Dan McGrew. Jewett admits that it may at first seem odd to recite poetry to a room full of ski patrollers but the room was captured in rapt attention and in the end the crowd went wild. McConkey went on to hand out hats to all the teams. There were the first place hats, the second place hats etc. And somewhere tucked among Jewett’s old memorabilia there’s a fifth place hat from that race.

That wasn’t the only time McConkey gave her a hat, she said.

Feeling very sorry for herself while living in Emerald with a broken leg, McConkey sent Jewett a hat to lift her spirits. It had been signed by the "Man who had Skied down Mount Everest."

"What a great pick me up," recalled Jewett.

It was people like that she said that made the memories.

Steve Podborski

Steve Podborksi was 14 in the summer of 1972. He and 40 other aspiring ski racers were living in tents built on wooden platforms under the gondola, as part of the Griffin Summer Ski Camp.

"We used to get up at 5 a.m., which was 2 a.m. Toronto time, and walk up to the glacier. When the sun hit the peak of the mountain, there was nothing on it but mountain goats then, it was awesome."

He remembers swimming in the glacier after a long practice and achieving "full-body ice cream headache."

He also remembers fellow Crazy Canuck skier Dave Murray challenging writer Doug Sack to a unique race down a Whistler giant slalom slope in the late 1970s. "They took a couple of 2X4s, strapped some bindings and went for it," he said. Murray won that day and the skis are still at the top of the orange chair in the race shack, Podborski said from his Telus office, where he is assistant vice-president of sport marketing.

Vincent Massey

As soon as Whistler Mountain opened, the Massey family, including four kids, two dogs, and coolers full of food, would pack into the family station wagon every single weekend.

Father Geoffrey Massey was involved in the planning of the mountain and an avid skier. And so every Friday, they would begin the four-hour journey north to Whistler from Horseshoe Bay, hitting the dirt road once they got past Squamish.

Vincent Massey was eight, tucked into the car with his two brothers and his sister. He remembers playing in the parking lot while the Creekside gondola barn was being built.

But the thing that stands out in his mind about those days was the sheer volume of snow that fell each winter.

Upon arrival in Creekside the kids would each get a shovel and begin digging up to their family cabin, above what is now the Petro-Canada in Creekside. It was one of the first cabins in the resort.

Massey remembers the long line ups as Vancouver skiers waited impatiently to get up the slow-moving Creekside gondola and the Red Chair.

It took so long to get up the mountain he said and they were so cold by the time they got to the top that the first order of business for the kids was to head into the original Roundhouse with its huge circular fireplace and get warm again.

The family never tired of this routine, as arduous as it seems these days.

"It was always exciting," recalled Massey. "We never missed a weekend."