Business
Snow Business
By Chris Cannon published Mar 1, 2009
Battling bad weather and bad press, Whistler stares down 2010
Poor Whistler. These are supposed to be the good years. The approaching Olympics have catapulted the resort to the top of the winter-destination food chain, and a series of capital improvements has sent enough money flying around to make one think Rupert Murdoch was attending a police auction at CNN. But with the Games only a year away, the trademark rings are starting to appear more like handcuffs for the once sleepy resort town.
Another magazine sent me to Whistler to take on an Olympian. The tourism folks were fixing me up with a biathlete for a little of the ol’ ski and shoot, and since I used to train snipers for the U.S. Marine Corps, I hoped to provide him an unexpected challenge. (Never mind that I don’t ski—I thought perhaps he’d be willing to tow me on my snowboard, with me shooting on the fly like the hero in a John Woo film.)
My strategy was rendered moot by a failed gasket. Only an hour before I arrived, a tower supporting the Excalibur gondola was sheared in half by “ice-jacking”—the result of water seeping into the tower and freezing, which expanded the joint between two steel sections. Fifty-three skiers and boarders were trapped, some for nearly four hours, while rescuers secured the tower and brought down the cars one by one.
As gondola-related news goes, it was relatively benign—none of the 12 injured required more than a few hours in the local clinic, and the Excalibur was back up a week later. But my showdown would have to be cancelled—the media fallout from the tower collapse put the Whistler PR machine on high alert as overeager reports, led with words like “disaster” and “tragedy,” saddled the resort with bad press even as it prepares for the event of its life.
