Whistler Blackcomb

The biggest on the continent

By many measures, Whistler Blackcomb is the largest ski resort in North America, and it also claims the greatest uphill lift capacity. It sits at Whistler in British Columbia, Canada, and attendance often passes two million visitors a year. Two mountains, Whistler and Blackcomb, are joined at the top by the Peak 2 Peak Gondola, which lets skiers move between them without dropping back to the valley.

The terrain

Our data gives 200 km of marked runs, split into 40 km easy, 110 km intermediate and 50 km expert, plus five terrain parks and 37 lifts. That is a strongly intermediate-led mix, with more than half the mileage in the middle grade, but the quarter of the area graded expert is a serious amount of steep terrain by any standard, and our records flag the resort for off-piste skiing too. Beginners get a fifth of the area to themselves, which at 40 km is more than the entire piste length of many smaller resorts.

The vertical runs from a 675 m base to 2,284 m, a drop of just over 1,600 m. The base is low for a resort with a November-to-May season, but the top station is high enough that altitude helps snow reliability on the upper mountain, and Whistler Blackcomb is flagged snow-sure in our data. The 2009-10 season, when the resort hosted the Olympic alpine events, brought 1,432 cm of snow, the second-highest total on record there.

History

Whistler was conceived as part of a bid for the 1968 Winter Olympics. The bid failed but construction went ahead, and the resort opened in January 1966. Blackcomb, originally a separate business, opened in December 1980, and through the 1980s and 1990s the two competed fiercely, each upgrading and improving at a pace other resorts did not match; by the mid-1990s the area was repeatedly being named the best resort by skiing magazines. Intrawest, the British Columbia developer behind Blackcomb, bought Whistler in 1997 and merged the operations in 2003. Whistler Village, admired for its livable design, became the model for Tyrolian-inspired developments Intrawest built at its other resorts.

The 2010 Vancouver Olympics brought the downhill, super-G, slalom, giant slalom and super combined events here for both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. In August 2016 Vail Resorts bought Whistler Blackcomb Holdings for $1.39 billion; Nippon Cable has kept a 25% interest in the Whistler and Blackcomb partnerships throughout the ownership changes.

Practicalities

Our data flags modern lifts, après-ski, off-piste and scenic views along with snow. The season, November to May, is two months longer than the December-to-April norm. Vancouver airport is the nearest at roughly 104 km as the crow flies, and the resort’s official website carries current conditions.