It didn’t take long for March’s early offerings to melt away in the valley.
Less than four weeks after a truly epic late-season deluge, the alliterative signs of spring are once again all around us in Whistler, whether that’s bikes on the Valley Trail, bears on the golf courses, or barbecues grilling up a storm in the neighbourhoods.
But March’s early bounty is still paying dividends up top. An April 7 article on theweathernetwork.com referred to it as a “300-cm miracle”: the storm that reversed spring-skiing fortunes for thousands.
“If you blinked, you might’ve missed it. What started as an unremarkable winter suddenly turned into a late-season surge. As of March 3, the resort had logged just 628 cm of snow—and skiers were quietly bracing for a forgettable finish,” wrote Weather Network meteorologist Tyler Hamilton.
“But the weather had other plans. Between March 3 and March 26, Whistler picked up a staggering 283 cm of snow, averaging more than 11.8 cm per day. By April 7, the total climbed to 936 cm, thanks to another 25 cm through early April.”
According to Hamilton, the sudden shift in snowy fortunes was the result of a favourable weather pattern.
A “stubborn trough” anchored over the Gulf of Alaska conspired with a deep supply of cold air and redirected the storm track straight onto B.C.’s South Coast.
“Instead of mild Pacific storms with high freezing levels, temperatures dropped just enough to keep snow levels low, especially in the alpine. High-moisture events suddenly became high-accumulation snowstorms,” Hamilton wrote.
According to the Weather Network, Whistler’s seasonal snowfall average from 1996 to 2025 hovered around 1,100 cm a year, with notable outlier years coming in ’98-’99 (~1,836 cm) ’09-’10 (~1,400 cm) and ’10-’11 (~1,600 cm).
So the 628 cm logged in early March was “edging uncomfortably close to the lowest full-season totals of the past 30 years,” Hamilton wrote. Those dismal lows include 635 cm in ’04-’05, 671 in ’14-’15 and 734 in ’00-’01.
But as luck would have it, the furious, 283-cm flurry of early March boosted the resort to a respectable 936 cm—not good enough to land in the record books, but at least enough to keep it from notoriety.
And it’s still coming. As of this writing on the morning of April 9, Whistler Blackcomb is reporting 10 centimetres of fresh snow on the mountains, and the snow stake at Pig Alley on Whistler Mountain is covered in a fresh white blanket. But all indications are spring skiing conditions persist, so your mileage may vary.
There’s no telling what next winter will bring in terms of total snowfall in the valley, or the winter after that, but the long-term trends on local mountains are undeniable. The announcement in late March that Whistler Blackcomb will no longer permit summer ski camps on the Horstman Glacier is proof enough of that.
“It is the reality of the glacier. As much as we’d like to blame somebody else, we can’t,” Momentum Camps’ John Smart told Pique last month. “We had a devastating result last year. This year rolls around, it’s a La Niña year, we’re all excited and then [the snow] shuts off in January and February.”
The snow (or lack thereof) was such that Momentum could not conceive of being able to build what it had in previous years.
“So it is a function of climate change,” Smart said. “There’s no denying that.”
The news is no doubt devastating for Momentum Camps, and indeed the ski community as a whole, but Smart isn’t giving up hope, pledging to double down on improving Momentum’s winter programs while also aiming to bring back summer camps with a new permanent training facility.
Whether or not we realize it or notice it as it’s happening, it’s a fundamental trait of humans—when circumstances change, we adapt, and keep moving forward (once we move past the initial stages of grief, of course… but most of us have come to terms with our denial and anger at this point).
In the big picture, winters in Whistler will look different going forward. That’s no secret. As individuals, we can’t fix or reverse climate change, force our governments to act (or go back in time to force them to act sooner). All we really have control over is how we respond to what’s in front of us.
And despair, however justified, is not a sustainable response.
So hope and adaptation it is.
