Snowsure: 4.1
- Occasionally gets enough snow for skiing
- Is often closed due to a lack of snow
- Occasionally suffers from a lack of snow
- Rarely suffers from a lack of snow
- Whistler Blackcomb is snowsure even in the poorest seasons
Visitor reviews for Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort
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(NOTE: Reviews may be edited by our content team for the purposes of ensuring accurate and relevant information)
(NOTE: Reviews may be edited by our content team for the purposes of ensuring accurate and relevant information)
Latest
December 26, 2012
Paul
Paul
December 16, 2012
Power Grinch
Power Grinch
December 13, 2012
Perri
Perri
Today was my 14th day skiing Whistler Blackcomb this year. It is my 21st season. The snow has been incredible - deep and dry - and there is no one here most days until after Christmas. Most resorts in North America are not even open yet. Today we skied knee deep untracked powder under the chairlift all morning. It is paradise. I can not believe anyone would criticise this place. I have skied all over the world and lets face it - this is a really amazing place. Unless someone invests some time here they really do not understand what this place offers. There are some challenging days but if you want to have the best chance of having a remarkable ski experience come to Whistler. You'll come back often and you will have a difficult time tolerating other resorts because once you ski Whistler Blackcomb there is little else to compare it to.
December 04, 2012
William from
USA - California
William from
USA - California
I have visited many resorts in both the Americas and Europe and I found Whistler to be a good resort. However, not as good as many people say. There was good snow but nothing to be amazed by and the lift system can get overcrowded. However, the new peak2peak gondola was a very nice addition to the resort.
All in all, I believe many of the extremely protective and precious reveiws saying how amazing Whistler is are a bit misleading as, although being a good resort, in my opinion it may not be the best in North America as resorts such as Breckenridge and Aspen are probably better and less crowded. Compared to resorts in Europe, in my opinion, Whistler, I'm afraid, cannot keep up with the ever changing landscape of the sheer amount of resorts the Alps has to offer.
Bearing all of this in mind though Whistler is a very good world class resort but perhaps is not the best in North America and not as good as everyone says.
November 11, 2012
Stu
Stu
Whistler/ Blackcomb has it all. Nobody can match their acreage. As far as the line-ups go, what we do is ski the lifts closest to the roundhouse first like Emerald & Big Red, then as the hordes show up, we go further away to lifts like Harmony & Symphony. The powder there can be pretty heavy & once it's tracked out, it's pretty tiring to ski. There are some buses that are free, like the one up to Blackcomb village.
July 25, 2012
Rob from
United Kingdom
Rob from
United Kingdom
I've spent two seasons in The Three Valleys in France and a few months in Whistler, BC; both designated as the largest and most versatile on their hemispheres, so this review covers the seasonal worker's review of Whistler.
Everything that has been put into legend regarding Whistler is effectively true, but has also been mentioned without the negatives.
It is mostrously large and takes a huge ammount of time to cover a hill; those on vacation will not get bored of this monolith. After five, or six weeks, however, a local can start to feel that, for all the mountain there aren't really many lifts and connectivity is scarce. One lift for one mountain area or bowl, but little choice in how to get around or get back out. This creates a bottleneck at almost every lift. With such large, wide mountains, a huge amount of people can fit on the runs, but they'll always come back to the bottleneck, where, on a standard day, you'll wait for twenty minutes minimum at any common lift.
A small note, for Europeans to heed, is that many of the black and all of the double black runs are not actually trails; they are the 'off piste' that you go searching for. Every possible chute or drop has been sign posted and drawn onto the maps, so you'll have a nightmare trying to find a decent drop that hasn't been sessioned within 20 minutes of lift opening time by anyone old enough to read a trailmap. Back country is still back country, but without a guide you'd be insane to go wondering off into the unknown and dropping off the back side of the mountains.
The Blackcomb glacier is a giant bowl which everyone talks about, but, unless you're up there early on a snow day (and it'll take you 50 minutes to get up there!) you will find nothing but crust and a twenty - thirty minute (depending on speed) flat road of ice around the entire base of the mountain before getting to the next available lift (also at a bottle neck, only one lift up from the resort). So, for a 60-90 minute round trip; I avoided Blackcomb glacier and went to the beautiful glades around the other side on "7th Heaven" every time, which have their own chair, but on a clear day, which is rare, you really do get the best runs, glades, bowls, conditions.
The problem with Whistler Blackcomb, you see, is it's size. In an attempt to reduce lift costs (or evnvironmental impact) the owners have put in only very large, long lifts, to service a designated area. This creates the bottlenecks and also means that you cannot find a short cut across the mountain. You have to use the main chairs, and the, sometimes futile, places that they've been planted.
The Whistler Bowls (there are three areas of these) are spectacular riding, but again, all signposted and tracked out by 9.30am (lift opens at 8.30 and fast-track passes allow people to go up early and eat breakfast on the mountain, where they get the 30 minutes headstart). On a snowday, you'll grab your gear and march out there, ready for the tough-guy time, however, much of the time you will be riding in a cloud. And although fun to challenge yourself, riding a tracked-out double-black bowl in a thick white cloud gets tricky. When you can see, you will find an amphetheatre of epic mountain potential, but you have to ride further and better than the rest to get to the untracked places.
- And the old Warning, unless going through a cold snap; if it's snowing on the mountain, it's likely raining in the town.... It's very, very low and very coastal down there... It will snow, but then, with the front passes, the rain will wash that away to the base. It is hard to get the riding conditions you want in this town and when it does snow, it is thick and heavy. Either it's tracked, or it's snowing (and you're in a cloud and it's tracked) or it's raining towards the bottom. It was warm last year, but not uncommonly warm...
Enough about the mountain though... If you're in Canada this is the largest scene and one of the only mountains designed with the town at the actual base of the mountain and not a 15 minute drive away... Seasonaires don't have cars!
- The town has all the tools, shops, bars, restaurants, clubs, hotels, groceries, carparks, tourist centres and etc that you would ever want. Getting around is not easy if you don't have a car, however. - There is no free shuttle bus! - You pay for the bus just like any normal town and that gets seriously expensive when you're loosing $5-$10 every day. There are only three lift stations, Blackcomb-upper, Whistler central and the original Whistler village. However, over half the town is a thirty minute (minimum) walk away from these areas. Whistler is a string of hamlets and micro-villages built along a 7 mile main road, with the village near the bottom and Whistler-main two thirds of the way up. If you're going for accommodation, look at your maps and seriously think about the cost of that bus-pass and the amount of walking you'll be doing, just to get around. Yeah, it's a "five minute bus ride", but you walk for ten to get to the bus, wait for ten, ride for five and walk for ten. Then you can begin your day. If you work in town, which you probably will, location could suck up or save you 2 needless hours every single day.
In short...
If you want Canadian friendliness and North American snow, try and find a smaller town and sacrifice the acreage for the real town people. (Whistler in it's popularity is half Australian, Irish and British, and the Canadians are more frequently just the locals, who've been there for years.)
If you want a huge resort/valley with all the connectivity, infrastructure, technology and amenities, go to Europe!
Whistler is a combination of the two, but in being so, it looses sight and fails on both accounts. It can be argued that this makes it truely unique and that 8000 acres of unique experience can't be bad. But life and money is short and if you have only one choice for a Canadian resort, I guess this could be your one. But in a world where even the Lonely planet guide now tells you all the five star restaurants in town, you have to wonder if it's cultural saturation and tourism that made you want to come here.
Whistler's popularity is routed in it's size; both town and mountain. But in this it creates a problem of saturation and eventually dilution of what you went there for in the first place. A true tourist-town, it has little real spirit left.
May 09, 2012
doc fingers
doc fingers
April 24, 2012
NoisyParkser from
United Kingdom
NoisyParkser from
United Kingdom
My how I wish I lived in Canada and had Whistler on my doorstep! And March was such a good month for snow. We went over for the tenth year at the end of January and we love it every time. Aren't a lot of another reviewer's complaints just common sense?? For instance, we saw the night before that there was a good dump overnight and guessed it would mean an early line for fresh tracks the next morning - so got there early; and surely the ticket can be used another day if the limit passes before you get on? Yes, it can be crunchy below Olympic but this year we had new powder every day and rated it as our best year. And of course it can take 40 minutes on the gondola - the mountain is that big. Anyone reading this should make sure they put Whistler down as their next skiing trip.
[note from the editor : text edited to avoid blog type threads]
April 18, 2012
IslandDoc
IslandDoc
Whistler is awesome. As someone who has work and family commitments, not to mention living on the island it is so worth the 5hrs travel I spend to ride mountain. If you think the lift lines are bad here for it's size you should ride some places where the mountain is 1/8th the size with lines just as bad. Don't trash the mountain because you're brilliant vacation idea was ruined because 10 thousand other Americans also had the same brilliant idea... "fools seldom differ!"
If you have the skill level for it head over to the Amphitheatre first thing in the morning. If it's not open due to a fresh dump ride Harmony until it does. Once it starts to get busy head over to Blackcomb and ride the Glacier or 7th Heaven expresses. Lakeside bowl is fabulous and the glades on lower panorama never get boring.
If you're starting late don't start on Whistler, every vacationing family always go to Whistler but Blackcomb is just as good, if not better! If you have kids who can only run greens take them up to 7th Heaven anyway, run the Green line to 7th Ave or the Expressway and down Sunset Blvd, it'll take you 30-45 mins for sure and it's a great experience for the little ones. Some of the blues up top are not even that bad.
My son (7) and niece (10) were riding the panorama run without even realizing it was a blue until I told them afterwards. Gave them a lot of confidence when they realized some blues are really just slightly harder greens!
April 17, 2012
Ron from
USA - California
Ron from
USA - California
Good advice below from many reviewers on avoiding lift lines at Whistler. Unfortunately, many of us with school-aged children can't avoid the busy vacation weeks and getting to the lifts when they first open isn't so easy either with kids. So, I offer an alternative. Vacation at far less crowded areas like Big Sky or Jackson hole. I can recall skiing Presidents Week at Big Sky where every other chair was empty and no one was in sight on many of my runs. Neither JH nor BS is quite as big as Whistler, but both are huge mountains with great variety. Snow quality is better (top to bottom light powder rather than Whistler's good on top and frozen crud on bottom). No rain either. A supposed downside is that both are difficult to get to because they require a airline connection from most US cities. However, total travel time from the East Coast is actually comparable to Whistler. OK, the night life is weak at Jackson Hole and non-existent at Big Sky, but that's a minor consideration for most families.
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