Whistler
Adventurers pour into Whistler during every season and from every corner of the world. In winter, you'll meet Australian and New Zealander skiers and guides who follow the snows around the globe; in summer there are sun-baked guides who chase the warm months to lead white-water rafting or mountain-biking excursions. These globe-trotters demonstrate how Whistler's outdoor sports culture now operates on a global, all-season scale.
The staging of sliding (bobsleigh, luge, skeleton) and alpine and cross-country skiing events in Whistler during the Olympic Games has yielded a host of opportunities for the adventurous, including a world-class cross-country center (and lodge) operated by the Whistler Legacies Society. The sliding center remains a professional training facility (the ice is rumored to be the fastest on the planet), as well as a public venue for those who've always wanted to experience the 100-km-per-hour (62-mile) thrill of a sliding sport. The mountains changed little after the games, other than having some commemorative signage to indicate what happened where.
Hikers and anglers, downhill and touring cyclists, free skiers and ice climbers, kayakers and golfers—there really is something for everyone here. Whistler and Blackcomb mountains are the reasons why most people are here, but the immediate environs are equally compelling. Garibaldi Provincial Park, adjacent to the Whistler area, is a 78,000-acre park with dense mountainous forests splashed with hospitable lakes and streams for fishing and kayaking. At Alta Lake, you’ll see clusters of windsurfers weaving across the surface, dodging canoeists. At nearby Squamish, the Stawamus Chief, the second largest granite monolith in the world behind Gibraltar, attracts serious rock climbers, although there are milder climbs for novices.
Whether online or in person, Tourism Whistler has information on all aspects of the resort. It also runs an online reservation center for accommodations, guides, and virtually anything else you might need.
