Whistler, paradise of the full air
Extracts of the Guide Ulysses Vancouver, Victoria and Whistler

Mecque of the sports, inter alia the ski, the golf, the pedestrian excursion, the bicycle of mountain, the board with veil, the parapente and the board with snow, Whistler attracts people of everywhere throughout the world.
An imposing hotel infrastructure honours the small village with the foot with the mon­tagnes Blackcomb and Whistler; sporting restaurants, shops, complexes and center of the congresses are added to this holiday resort recognized internationally. The place is attended be like winter, and each season has its batch of activities to be proposed.

ATTRACTIONS

At the beginning of the years 1960, a group of adventurers wanted to make this area the site of the Winter Olympics of 1968 by developing the Garibaldi park.

In spite of their incapacity to obtain the plays at that time, these visionaries did not give up the idea to make this valley a vast skiable field. The population of Whistler multiplied by ten during her the first 20 years, and, in 2007, it counted some 9 600 permanent residents and almost as many owners of second homes. Each year, the town of Whistler accomodates more than 2 million visitors.

The tourist municipality of Whistler extended and took a great importance as a village where people live permanently, in order to develop tourism to the maximum. Thus, with share the large hotels, joint ownerships were done increasingly many, and the trade multiplied. To make it possible to the tourists to more easily move, a free shuttle service around the village was founded. Whistler receives each year more than 900 cm of snow, and the temperature oscillates on average around -5°C during the winter months.

Whistler

The shops of course are devoted in majority to the tourists but also to Vancouvérois. That encourages the purchase of joint ownerships as second homes and supports the saving in Whistler. Thus settled there shopping centres and department stores of food. The art and the art galleries developed also considerably. The number of showrooms increased, and Whistler Arts Council offers many interesting programs.

Several events proceed in Whistler throughout the year, as the male World cup of descent, the World cup of hot-dogging, the week of the gay skiers, the festival of film, etc. The jazz and the classical music take also an increasingly important place in this young agglomeration.

In 2010, whereas Vancouver accomodates the Winter Olympics, Whistler will be the site of the competitions of Alpine skiing and Scandinavian, bobsleigh, toboggan and skeleton, just as of the paralympic tests.

Take time to go to go in the hotel village to the bottom of the mountains; you will be able to better appreciate the environment of festival and leisure which emerges some. All that has a certain price, and these leisures are rather expensive.

Outside the small village, with the entry of the area of Whistler, Function Junction is, which is, to some extent, the small industrial district of the area. The Olympic village of Whistler will be built just at side, in what one names “Cheakamus Valley”.

Winter activities of full air

Alpine skiing and board with snow
Whistler is regarded as the ski resort No 1 in North America with its average of 10 m snow per year and its 1 600 m of unevenness. Once on the site, you will be able to choose between two mountains: Whistler Mountain (2 182 m) and Blackcomb Mountain (2 284 m) (1-866-218-9690, www.­whistlerblackcomb.com). Extraordinary ski, ultramodern installations, but attention with your budget.

You will include/understand why the prices are so high by seeing the troops of Japanese and American tourists monopolizing the hotels and the blue tracks. The two mountains of combined Whistler and Blackcomb form the greatest skiable field in Canada. These alpine ski resorts of international class are privileged by abundant falls of snow and have enough hotels to lodge the population of a city. This metropolis of the ski top-of-the-range offer also the possibility of skiing on tracks not rammed in an impeccable duster and, if the fall of snow is recent, you will make S in an alpine landscape of any beauty.

Whistler Mountain is the elder one of the two stations. The experts, the insane ones of the duster and the jumpers all of cliff will flow in Peak Chair, the chair-lift which leads to the top of Whistler Mountain. Of up there, the skiers and the planchists aguerris have access to an alpine zone made up of red tracks and black glazes of a deep and light snow.

For the enthusiastic ones of the ski in North America, Blackcomb represents impossible to circumvent “muscular” ski. A vigorous debate is maintained since the years by the skiers with knowing which of the two mountains (Whistler or Blackcomb) is the best. Unquestionable thing, Blackcomb gains the palm in the category of the vertical unevenness with its 1 609 m. When you are in Blackcomb, make a turn on the glacier. From there, the sight is formidable!

Héli-ski
If you were already conquered by the landscapes of Whistler, that’s no problem: it is time for you to have the cut breath! Go up on board a helicopter which will deposit you on a top with, descending in front of you, of the kilometers of still virgin duster. To organize an excursion, the skiers and the planchists of intermediate level to advanced will be able to address themselves to Whistler Heli-Skiing Ltd. (730$ per three voyages, lunch and guide; 1-888-435-4754).