After a dreadful snow season last year, Whistler Blackcomb (WB) is banking on better weather and a pair of upgraded lifts to improve the skier experience this winter.
“Mother Nature coming to the party the way that we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks, and certainly over the last week, with a good amount of fresh snowfall in the alpine and down through mid-mountain, it’s really encouraging,” said Belinda Trembath, VP and COO of Whistler Blackcomb.
Pique spoke with WB’s top staffer last week ahead of opening day for a wide-ranging interview looking ahead to the upcoming ski season. With promising snowfall and chilly temperatures, WB opened Blackcomb Mountain on Thursday, Nov. 21, a day ahead of schedule, with Whistler Mountain opening the following day as originally planned.
Serviced by Blackcomb Gondola, Excalibur Gondola, Excelerator, Catskinner and the upgraded Jersey Cream Express, Blackcomb opened Thursday with 87 acres (35 hectares) of skiable terrain. Whistler Mountain, meanwhile, offered another 100 acres (40 hectares) on Friday, serviced by the Whistler Village Gondola, Emerald Express, and Franz’s Chair.
The latest lift investment
Blackcomb’s new Jersey Cream Express, upgraded from a four-seater to a six-seater, is expected to increase uphill capacity by 29 per cent. Between that and Whistler Mountain’s upgraded Fitzsimmons Express, which debuted last winter and increased capacity from 1,850 to 3,300 skiers per hour, Trembath expects better circulation across both mountains as the season progresses.
“There are so many options now for people to change up their ski day and to really think about where they want to be,” she said. “These lift investments really do just give people more options to move around the mountain, and I think the lap times on Jersey Cream will certainly take the pressure off that area and perhaps encourage people to stay in that area, as opposed to moving to some of the other more crowded areas on the hill.”
Jersey Cream represents the fourth lift investment at WB since 2022, after upgrades to the Big Red Express, Creekside Gondola, and Fitz Express. While Vail Resorts doesn’t have any immediate plans for another lift installation, Trembath said the Colorado-based company is “always looking for ways to enhance the guest experience” at its largest resort.
Pay parking coming to WB lots?
WB hopes to improve the guest arrival experience this winter through a trial carpool program that will permit only vehicles with four or more occupants to park in Upper Lot 7 on Blackcomb and on level P1 at the Creekside Parkade from 6 to 11 a.m. on weekends and peak periods. After 11 a.m., these lots will open to all vehicles.
“It's really designed to encourage people to carpool and not to meet in the car park to start their ski day, which is definitely a habit that we see with guests and locals alike,” said Trembath, adding WB will apply the learnings from the pilot program and an associated parking study it is mandated to carry out into future seasons.
That study was one of the conditions attached to the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s (RMOW) hasty approval, in March 2023, of the upgraded Fitz Express. In lieu of the additional 725 parking spots WB would have had to install under normal conditions, elected officials mandated the ski resort pay the RMOW $200,000 annually—funds that will go toward transit and active-transportation improvements—until it implements pay parking on the lots it owns.
Asked if there are plans to introduce pay parking, Trembath said nothing is off the table.
“The learnings we have had so far through our parking study, and the learnings we've had from some of the initiatives we've implemented at our resorts down in the U.S., would suggest that everything from carpool incentives to reservations to paid parking can really improve the parking and arrivals experience for our guests,” she said. “So, paid parking is something that we would consider, and we would definitely be looking to continue to closely collaborate with community partners on those sorts of initiatives.”
Pass pricing
With another ski season came a bump in WB’s pass and lift ticket pricing across the board. Asked what was behind the increases, Trembath said Vail Resorts considers several factors.
“Like any business, we look at macroeconomic factors: inflation, the cost of delivering services, and our general product mix,” she said. “We really do stand behind the products that we have available in advance of the season and the value that they provide.”
Trembath cited WB’s Edge card, with a 5-day adult card priced at $534; its unlimited WB season pass, priced at $1,541; and its Epic Pass, granting unlimited, unrestricted access to WB and 17 other Vail Resorts’ ski areas, priced at USD$1,107 (CAD$1,552 at press time), as examples of good-value products in the company’s suite of pass options.
Passes and Edge cards go off sale for the season on Dec. 2.
Staffing
WB is looking at a full staffing complement heading into the winter, Trembath said. While the company doesn’t typically share figures around personnel, in the past, WB has told Pique it counts more than 4,000 employees during the ski season.
A looming question for the ski resort that has yet to be answered in detail is when its long-awaited staff housing building, Glacier 8, will open to employees.
First proposed in 2019, the six-storey, 66-unit complex will add 240 new staff beds to WB’s stock, making it the largest injection of workforce beds Whistler has seen in years.
WB originally targeted fall 2025 for Glacier 8’s opening, but that is looking increasingly unlikely. Like she did last month when asked by mayor and council, Trembath stopped short of offering a firm timeline for the project’s opening.
“We are still working through a complex set of discussions with our development partners, and that makes it difficult for us to provide a firm timeline at this point in time,” she said.
Asked what those complex discussions are, Trembath said she wouldn’t go into details of the negotiations, but that any housing project the scale of Glacier 8 is “complex by nature when you’re working with development partners that you’re going to be entering into longer-term leases with.”
Mountain safety
Always top of mind, Whistler Blackcomb’s COO wanted to “reassure locals we’re continuing to work very closely with our mountain safety team to provide a safe experience on mountain,” Trembath said.
From changes designed to create better access to the Catskinner loading area on Blackcomb for “first-timers skiing the Easy Out trail” to connecting the top of the Excelerator quad to a new Catskinner Express trail, Trembath said mountain safety staff were “really innovative this summer in thinking about how skiers circulate” on Blackcomb. “It was particularly looking after those first-timers and low to intermediate skiers that want to avoid mixing with folks coming out of our signature terrain park area.”
On the Whistler side, crews have made improvements around Olympic station “to improve the experience for first-timers mid-mountain,” she added.
Trembath also mentioned a new mower WB acquired that covered ample terrain on both mountains this summer, which “really sets us up to provide that better-groomed product early in the season.”
Climate
Ski resorts around the globe have had to consider how the climate crisis will impact the industry, with experts predicting significantly lower snowfall and shortened winters on the horizon.
Trembath said it’s something WB, and the industry at large, has been pondering for years.
“The ski industry generally has been very proactive at adapting to climate change, through investment in snowmaking, through an investment in snow-farming techniques. Using wind fences to catch snow, artificial surfaces for loads and unloads,” she explained.
WB is “well on its way” to achieving its target of zero waste to landfill by 2030, said Trembath.
The company will also continue investing in electric vehicles. Currently, it has three electric vehicles in its fleet: one in the maintenance department, as well as two electric snowmobiles.
“We are constantly looking at and working with the snowcat manufacturers on how they're progressing with electric snow cats,” Trembath added. “We're not ready to take those on into our fleet yet, but in the future, I can see that as being a component of our fleet.”
