Whistler Mountain opened for skiing in February, 1966, with a gondola lift, double chairlift (the Red Chair) and T-bar, all built by GMD Mueller. The new mountain won instant acclaim for its vertical drop, good snow conditions, and huge alpine area. The only problem at the time was the road—it was a dirt logging track, which was only plowed on Saturday, to the detriment of Friday travelers. The mountain soon expanded, adding the Blue and Green chairlifts in 1970, as well as a mountaintop lodge, the Roundhouse, which provided respite for cold skiers who had survived the long ride up on the Red Chair. After the Sea-to-Sky Highway was paved in 1969, more people than ever came to Whistler Mountain, which is located two hours north of Vancouver and four hours north of Seattle.
The mountain added the Olive and Orange chairlifts in 1972. A parallel lift to the Green Chair to alleviate crowds came in 1974, and the Little Red Chair came in 1978. Because the number of visitors was rapidly increasing, the town in the valley had to expand as well to accommodate them. A plan was drawn up, and the village of Alta Lake was incorporated into the Resort Municipality of Whistler in 1975. The new municipal government, which had powers that enabled better management of the growing community, immediately, initiated construction of Whistler Village.
Whistler Village opened in 1980. Along with it came a succession of three triple chairlifts, the Village, Olympic, and Black Chairs, that carried skiers from the Village to the Roundhouse in no less than 45 minutes. Hotels and restaurants soon emerged in the pedestrian village. Hearthstone Lodge, built by Vancouver real estate developer Clifford Ames, was the first building completed during phase I of construction. The next major addition came in 1986, when the Peak Chair to the summit of Whistler Mountain was constructed. This lift revolutionized skiing on Whistler Mountain, allowing access to the largest alpine ski area in North America.
In response to Blackcomb Mountain's construction of three high-speed quad chairlifts, Whistler Mountain undertook one of the biggest ski-lift construction projects ever realized in Canada, the construction of the Whistler Express Gondola. Carrying passengers 1,157 m (3,795 ft) vertically and 5 km (3 mi) horizontally over 63 support towers, the lift opened on November 24, 1988. In 1990 Whistler Mountain reached another milestone, the addition of its first high-speed quad chairlift. The Green Chair Express, which replaced the Green Chairs, was built by Lift Engineering (Yan), and substantially cut long lift queues in the Green area of the mountain. A year later, in 1991, Whistler Mountain continued in its construction streak, replacing three double chairlifts and the original gondola with two high-speed quad chairlifts, the Quicksilver and Redline lifts, also built by Lift Engineering.
1994 saw the removal of the Blue Chair, and the construction of the Harmony Express, which started from the base of the former Blue Chair, but ran all the way to the top of Little Whistler Peak. In 1995, tragedy struck. On 23 December 1995, the lift operator on the Quicksilver lift pressed the button to make a routine stop, to allow a fallen skier to get out of the way of the unloading ramp. Instead, the emergency brake activated, sending shockwaves down the cable. Grips on at least two of the chairs slipped, and caused chairs to slide down the cable and slam into each other. In all, eight were injured, and two were killed[3] [4] in one of the worst ski lift accidents in North America. The disaster ended up causing the bankruptcy of the lift's manufacturer, Lift Engineering.
In 1997, the Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation was bought out by Intrawest, which had owned Blackcomb since 1986. Big changes were made on Whistler Mountain. The Quicksilver lift was replaced with a gondola, the Green Chair Express and Redline lifts were removed and replaced with modern Doppelmayr lifts, and the original Roundhouse was demolished and a new lodge built in its place. 1998 saw the replacement of the Peak triple chair with a high-speed quad. 2000 brought more changes, as the Black Chair was replaced with a high-speed quad (the Garbanzo Chair), and another was added (the Fitzsimmons Chair), following the line of the long-gone Village Chair. The top of the Fitzsimmons and the bottom of the Garbanzo are more or less co-located in the Village Gondola Olympic station area, thus providing extra lifting capacity from the main village into the high Alpine additional to the Village Gondola itself.
In 2005 Whistler-Blackcomb announced the proposed $51.4 million Peak to Peak gondola which aims to break the world records for height, as well as total distance between two towers. The gondola terminals will be adjacent to Whistler's Roundhouse and Blackcomb's Rendezvous restaurants. The 4.4 km (2¾ mi) lift would span 415 m (1,360 ft) above Fitzsimmons Creek with just four towers. The maximum distance between the two largest towers will be about 2.9 km (1¾ mi) long. Construction of the lift began in May 2007 and should take 18 months to complete, just in time for the 2008/2009 season. Construction is only taking place during the summer months and shut down in October. During the summer of 2006, Whistler-Blackbomb installed a new four person detachable chair that begins at the base of Flute Bowl and carries riders to the top of Piccolo. In August 2006, Whistler-Blackcomb announced that this new lift was to be called the Symphony Express and would provide access to the Symphony Amphitheatre, a name chosen to reflect the high alpine area's natural amphitheatre-like terrain. The new lift opened on December 16 2006 [5].
Whistler Mountain is said to offer some of the most varied terrain of any North American resort, from the park and pipes, to glades, cliffs off the peak chair, wide open harmony and symphony zone, beginner terrain at the base, and cruiser runs off the gondola and Big Red chair