Want to go from the top of Whister to the top of Blackcomb in about 11 minutes? Sure. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
If you’ve ridden British Columbia’s Whistler Blackcomb, generally just called Whistler, you know just how good of a mountain it is. Endless terrain. Pristine backcountry. It’s the largest ski resort in North America with the greatest uphill lift capacity. One of the best features about the place is the Peak 2 Peak gondola, which runs from, as you’d expect, the peak of Blackcomb to the peak of Whistler. It’s a wildy fun thing to ride on, offering stunning views of one of North America’s most beautiful places. When you’re on it, the views make it easy to forget what a marvel of engineering that gondola is.
At almost two miles long, the thing required a whole lot of imaginative innovation. The massive cables had to come from Switzerland. When I was younger, the Peak 2 Peak gondola didn’t exist. Blackcomb was much less popular. I hadn’t actually been there until around 2009 or 2010, just after the gondola was completed, and it was a game changer. All of a sudden a vast new area was open and accessible without going from the top of one to the bottom, then up to the top of the other.
This video shows just how difficult building the one-of-a-kind gondola was, but with big brains, $52 million, and a whole lot of elbow grease, it became the preferred method of going from one mountain to another. As I said, though, it was no easy feat. See, plain old gondola cables aren’t made to span distances like the one between Whistler and Blackcomb unsupported. But building support towers from the base to the height of the peaks was an impossible feat. The winds howl through there — mountains are not the most hospitable places when the weather turns — so simply finding cables strong enough was a feat in and of itself. After a company in Switzerland made them especially for this project, then came the problem of getting the five spools that weighed 97 tons each from Switzerland to Western Canada. After that came the problem of getting them up to the top. Then there was the issue of getting them from peak to peak — a process that took over 12 weeks to complete — but finally, finally, after a little over two years of work, the two mountains were connected via long-ass cables with cars hanging from them. All so we can ride two mountains in a day. Aren’t we a lucky bunch?
