After last summer's season-long closure to accommodate gondola construction, mountain bikers will get their first look at a brand-new set of trails—and revisit some of their favourite intermediate and advanced routes—when the Whistler Mountain Bike Park's Creekside Zone reopens this Saturday.
The Bike Park's Creek and Garbanzo zones will open to riders when lifts start spinning at 10 a.m. on June 10. (Scroll down for a full list of trails Whistler Blackcomb expects to have open.)
While lift teams were hard at work installing towers and terminal stations for the 10-person, high-speed Creekside Gondola replacement last year, crews took advantage of the opportunity to build 11 kilometres of brand-new trails underneath the similarly new lift.
Whistler Blackcomb is celebrating the grand-opening of that terrain with a kickoff event at Whistler Mountain's Creekside Base beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday, with the help of a few of its brand partners.
The resort invites riders to drop by the new Crankbrothers Lounge on the Dusty's patio for a chance to win a Bike Park season pass, with other giveaways including a GoPro, SRAM XO Transmission group-set and a fully-built GT Fury mountain bike. Bike School staff will also be around to present a few "fun bike challenges" (they'll have even more prizes to hand out) while Oakley will have a demo centre up and running throughout the day.
If you're more interested in the après festivities, a DJ will spin tunes at Dusty's during Kokanee Happy Hour between 3 and 6 p.m., followed by an after-party featuring local rockers Red Chair.
Those new Creekside trails can expect to see their fair share traffic this summer, as construction on the Bike Park's usual heavy-lifter, the Fitzsimmons Express chair, continues. The Whistler Village Gondola has been the only upload option for mountain bikers since the bike park opened for the season on May 19.
Putting a slight damper on the opening-weekend anticipation was Wednesday's announcement that the Peak 2 Peak Gondola may not open for sightseeing this weekend as scheduled. The Peak 2 Peak was expected to open for the summer sightseeing season on Saturday, June 10, but Whistler Blackcomb said it could need to delay the lift's reopening to allow more time for crucial repairs.
The resort confirmed an issue its Lift Maintenance Team discovered at the end of the winter season can be fixed, and said the gondola will reopen to ferry sightseers over Fitzsimmons Creek as soon as those repairs wrap up.
"Given the uncertainty around P2P operations," the resort said it plans to reopen the Upper Village's Blackcomb Gondola early on Saturday morning, June 10, to accommodate both sightseers and athletes heading up to glacier camps on Blackcomb Mountain. Though sightseers will be required to upload via Blackcomb Gondola for the majority of the summer, the lift was scheduled to remain closed for maintenance during the week spanning June 10 to 16.
"We are optimistic [the Peak 2 Peak] will be ready on Saturday, June 10 for the start of sightseeing as planned, but out of an abundance of caution we cannot guarantee it at this point," the resort explained in a post to its lift blog.
Whistler Mountain Bike Park trails slated to open on June 10:
Creek Zone:
Blue
- Cirque Du Soil
- Earth Circus
- Palm Corners
- Barking Duck
- Bengal Bear NEW
- Spingnar NEW
- Call Me Maybe NEW
Black
- Delayed Fuse
- Insomnia
- Shomer Shabbos
- Line of Control NEW
Double Black
- Sabertooth Horse
- Pumpkin Moon NEW
Garbanzo Zone:
Green
- Bear Cub
Blue
- Lower Blue Velvet
- Upper Blue Velvet
- Blueberry Bathtub
- Expressway
- Little Alder
- Weasel Juice
Black
- Duffman
- Lower Freight Train
- Upper In Deep
- Lower In Deep
- More Duff
- Lower No Joke
- Original Sin
- Too Tight
- Lemon Peel
Double Black
- Captain Safety
- Drop-In Clinic
- Fatcrobat/Gordo
- Goat’s Gully
Proline
- Filthy Ape
