Spring Skiing at Blackcomb Mountain

I am glad we skied twice on the Whistler mountain earlier in the season, as the Whistler side of the mountain closed for the skiing season on April 18. However, the Blackcomb mountain is open till May 23, 2022, so Kavya and I went to Blackcomb on April 23 for some spring skiing.

Since the lifts don’t start till 10 am, we didn’t have to rush in the morning and left home around 7:45 am. We reached Whistler just before 10 am, and the P1 parking lot was already full. So we found a spot in the P2 lot and followed other skiers/riders to the gondola.

Excalibur Gondola

I assumed that we were heading to Blackcomb Gondola. But once we got there, I realized that we would be going up the Excalibur Gondola.

The lineup was not too bad, and it probably took about five minutes to get on the gondola. The gondola briefly slowed down at the Base II Station to pick up people who parked at P6. We got down at an elevation of 1130 m and then made our way to the Excelerator Express.

Excelerator Express

For our first run of the day, we went down the Green Line – the easiest run down the mountain. There was a light dusting of snow, and the conditions were not as good compared to our previous two visits to Whistler.

Later we did some blue runs – Zigzag, Buzz Cut, Honeycomb, Cruiser. Zigzag was probably our favourite run here.

On some blue runs served by Excelerator Express

Later in the morning, the lineup was getting longer at the lifts, and it took us about 10-15 minutes to get on the chairlift.

Around 1 pm, we skied down Crystal Glide run to the base of Crystal Ridge Express.

Crystal Ridge Express

It was much busier at Crystal Ridge Express compared to Excelerator Express.

We first went down Rock ‘N’ Roll, and the snow was much better than that on the previous runs of the day.

Around 2:30 pm, we took a break at the Crystal Hut. The hut was closed but had some benches outside that people could share.

Our next run was a combination of different blue runs – White Light, Blue Line and Cyrstal Glide. For the final run of the day, we did Ridge Runner to get to the base of Crystal Ridge Express and then continued on Glacier Road to get to the top of Excalibur Gondola.

From here, we skied down the Green Line to the base of Blackcomb Gondola. It was around 3:30 pm. We had been on the mountain for five hours and did about nine laps, covering 27+ km with a vertical drop of close to 5150 m. For this late in the season, it was a pretty good day of skiing with Kavya.

Territory Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge that this trip took place on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the St’át’imc (Stat-lee-um), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Líl̓wat Nations. I commit to learning about Indigenous peoples and issues and making reconciliation an ongoing effort.

Source: Native-Land Pronunciation Guide: First-Nations.info