Skiers, boarders eager as La Nina expected to bring lots of snow

B.C.’s ski and snowboard industry has high hopes for the upcoming season. With reports that the La Nina weather cycle will bring heavy snow throughout the winter, ski and snowboarding areas are busy getting lifts and hills ready. At Whistler Blackcomb, plans are for the resort to open Whistler Mountain Friday, with Blackcomb following on Thursday, Nov. 25.

Super, natural British Columbia in Whistler with Thomson

Whistler offers excellent snow and a lot of woodland runs, as well as high bowls and glaciers. It has 2 mountains to explore with 8,171 acres of piste. And the recently added PEAK 2 PEAK gondola now means you can ski both without having to go back down to base.

Whistler Blackcomb ski resort opens tube park and for summer skiing

Whistler Blackcomb’s Horstman Glacier has re-opened to allow summer skiing and riding until Sunday, July 25th. For the first time ever, Whistler Blackcomb will also be opening a tube park in the alpine on Whistler Mountain as snow allows. In addition the resort has announced that following its record breaking snowfall this winter, there is still more than 50 inches in some places making snowshoeing possible.

With another 20cm (eight inches) of snow falling on Whistler in the past few days, the resort’s snowfall tally since it opened for the season last autumn has passed 1,430 centimetres or 47 feet, surpassing the 2006/07 record of 1,416 centimetres or 46 feet, making this season officially the second snowiest on record at the famous Canadian resort.

Winter plans to capitalise on worldwide publicity from the Olympic Games, which they estimate were viewed by more than half the world’s population, by opening up several of their Olympic competition venues to the paying public next winter. The Whistler Sliding Centre which hosted bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events will open a public ride program next season for visitors who want to try bobsleigh and skeleton on the Olympic track.

With two weeks to go to the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics and the backdrop of a record snowfall as well as the blessing of international ski officials, the finishing touches are being applied over the next 16 days to the Olympic alpine ski racing courses at Whistler Blackcomb.

Whistler Blackcomb, the Canadian ski resort that will host some of the Winter Olympic Games next month, could be sold off in a struggle between Wall Street bankers and a private equity firm over the renegotiation of hundreds of millions of dollars in loans. Lenders to Fortress Investment Group, a leveraged buyout group, have posted notices of foreclosure in several North American newspapers, announcing a public auction of the assets of Intrawest, the Whistler Blackcomb resort operator.

Whistler blackcomb smashes record for snowiest month EVER with over 5.5 metres (18 feet) of snowfall. November 2009 takes the podium as Whistler Blackcomb’s snowiest month in recorded history.