The (Near) Future Belongs To Creekside in Whistler

Anyone who has been to Whistler Blackcomb since it was bought has heard the complaint: “Whistler doesn’t care about day skiers anymore.”  It’s not 100-percent wrong, but it’s also sort of illogical—it’s like complaining that Air Canada favours those who book their tickets well in advance with lower fares and have something against those who wait until the day before their trip to book their tickets.

But today’s announcement about the new infrastructure investments are going to make that argument quite a bit tougher to make. Both new projects, increasing the Creekside Gondola from a 6-Person to a 10-person and increasing the Big Red chair from a 4-person to a 6-person are aimed squarely at improving uphill access at Creekside—which is the favoured spot for daytrippers from Vancouver.

Evidently the change will increase uphill capacity by 30 percent, but that’s for the whole mountain. For those who use Creekside as their main access point—aka those locals/daytrippers who complain about not being loved—I have to think that wait times will be dramatically reduced, which is a huge boon when your doing an up and back from Vancouver.

We’ll parse through all the announced changes in the coming weeks and give you the skinny about what’s good and what’s bad, but this first one was so major we wanted to fire it off ASAP so you can start booking those Nordic Drive condos and rooms at Nita Lake Lodge for next year.