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Pacific NW/AK/BC After 28 Years, Whistler's Camp Of Champions Comes To An End

Tricia

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With all of the changes at Whistler, this is one is tough to wrap my mind around.
See story from Snowbrains.
Snip:
“It’s not Whistler Blackcomb’s fault. They excel at ensuring their customers and COC receive an exceptional experience and they have always delivered. Simply put, it’s the effects of global warming. I wanted to give you an exceptional experience, and now I can’t. I haven’t slept in a week. After 28 years my dream is over. Honestly, I want to crawl under a rock. I feel like I have died. Camp is my life.” – Camp of Champions owner Ken Achenback
 

Frankly

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Wow, I know Canadians are good at apologies but this guy should get an award for saying, "sorry". I'd remove all sharp objects and long fabrics/ropes/belts from his proximity.
 

markojp

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Odd though that this season's coverage is at 125% and better for the PNW, hut haven't checked coast mtns snow info at all lately.
 
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Tricia

Tricia

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Odd though that this season's coverage is at 125% and better for the PNW, hut haven't checked coast mtns snow info at all lately.
When we were skiing Whistler it sure seemed like there was lots of snow.
I wonder how much the glacier has changed over the years.
I also wonder how much this decision is based on change in management.
 

Muleski

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I hear that it has to do with the bankruptcy, and the issues driving that. Nothing to do with the snow surface, likely nothing to do right now with global warming. There are race camps looking forward to great conditions.

Unfortunate, regardless.
 

Magi

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I hear that it has to do with the bankruptcy, and the issues driving that. Nothing to do with the snow surface, likely nothing to do right now with global warming. There are race camps looking forward to great conditions.

Unfortunate, regardless.

The article makes it seem pretty clear that the bankruptcy is a direct result of not having enough snow to build jumps for the freestyle camp. There's snow to race on - just none to build intermediate/expert ramps for jumping.

On May 31st, we received an email from Whistler Blackcomb stating, “It may look like there is plenty of snow to use on the glacier but in reality this season’s snow pack is not very dense and is full of air. When this snow gets moved and the air escapes it makes for much less snow than meets the eye. Keeping snow on the glacier will prevent melt, therefore regulating jump size is very important.”

Once I received this email, I knew that we weren’t going to have enough snow to build the park we’ve been promising everyone all winter.
...

This year’s snow pack is less dense than usual because we enjoyed such a long cold winter. We didn’t get the wet cement spring snow that builds the snow pack we count on. During the snow drought years of 2014 and 2015 we started with more snow than we have now and barely made it through two weeks. For 2017, there isn’t enough snow to build intermediate or expert sized jumps. A huge portion of our campers are intermediate / expert level riders, and a park without those features will leave them unsatisfied. It wouldn’t have lasted to the end of the camp season either.
 

Magi

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When we were skiing Whistler it sure seemed like there was lots of snow.
I wonder how much the glacier has changed over the years.
I also wonder how much this decision is based on change in management.

From the article:

“Every year, the final pitch of the Horstman T-Bar shrinks more and more making it harder and harder for Whistler Blackcomb to maintain. The giant pile of snow connecting the glacier to the top of the lift and the glacier itself is melting. This has accelerated over the last 4 summers. To give you an idea of how much melting has happened the last few years, in 2015 alone the glacier lost 35 vertical feet of ice. Last year, the entrance to the entire glacier had to be moved 40 feet lower. Campers now load on the T-Bar 3 towers up the glacier from where we loaded in 1989. The rock I used to sit on to do up my bindings in 1989 is 140 or more feet up the cliff wall above the camp park. Whistler Blackcomb spends an incredible amount of money and puts in an exceptional amount of work keeping that lift safe so people can ski the glacier in the winter and camps like us can operate through July. They installed snowmaking two winters ago to help build up the snow pack. They farm natural snow in the area where our summer park is and push it to the T-Bar to build up the track. Despite this, the T-Bar couldn’t open until mid/late January this winter because so much new natural snow was needed to rebuild the track after the last 2 seasons’ melt. Unfortunately all this work to restore the T-Bar’s track combined with the surprisingly airy snow pack has left us with the least amount of snow we have ever had to build our park with. In a nutshell, there isn’t enough snow to deliver what we promised. For this to happen after such an exceptional winter makes this news even harder to take. I thought we’d turned to corner from bad snow summers.” – Camp of Champions owner Ken Achenback
 

fatbob

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I hear that it has to do with the bankruptcy, and the issues driving that. Nothing to do with the snow surface, likely nothing to do right now with global warming. There are race camps looking forward to great conditions.

I've no horse in the race but it doesn't exactly ring true that cancel camp = automatic bankruptcy = let credit card companies foot the bill. I can get that if he has only banked relatively small deposits then they may already have been eaten up in overhead but something often smells of cashflow problems in these sort of situations.
 

Philpug

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Camps are not cheap. They are not cheap to run and they are not cheap to attend and there are more options and competion for the skiers money.
 
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Tricia

Tricia

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I hear that it has to do with the bankruptcy, and the issues driving that. Nothing to do with the snow surface, likely nothing to do right now with global warming. There are race camps looking forward to great conditions.

Unfortunate, regardless.
I understand that there are still race camps planned for the summer, so this makes sense.

And, @Magi I read the article so I understand the changes on the glacier in those terms, but I also know that there are still activities happening, so I wonder how much the glacial melt really has to do with this decision.
 

trailtrimmer

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I can't imagine it's cheap pushing all that snow around, beyond that, churning up the snow pack does indeed allow it to melt faster. If management wants to look out for the longevity of their operations, allowing race training or nothing it all will disturb the snow much less.
 

Philpug

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I understand that there are still race camps planned for the summer, so this makes sense.

And, @Magi I read the article so I understand the changes on the glacier in those terms, but I also know that there are still activities happening, so I wonder how much the glacial melt of the bank account really has to do with this decision.

FIFY.
 

Mike King

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Have any of you been to Whistler recently? I've been going fairly regularly over the past 5 years. What is clear is how much the glacier has changed just in the short period of time. When I was there in February, they were doing a bunch of work to install and operate snowmaking to attempt to keep the slope in shape. I was also shocked at how the T-Bar had changed just since the last time I was there (two years ago).

Perhaps there is more to the story than the conditions at the Whistler, but much of the letter rings true. The email from Whistler about the snowpack, the air in the snowpack, the lack of heavy dense snow in the spring, and the observable changes in the Horstman T-Bar. If it isn't due to global warming, it most certainly is due to the cycle of climate we are currently in.

Mike
 

James

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I may be more on the conservative side than many here, but I am calling BS on a lack of snow in the spring/summer of 2017

This is some wack-job trying to play political games.

Sorry, not buying it
I'm guessing you've never been to the glacier on Whistler in the 90's, 2000's, 2010's..or ever. There's more to the story than just one sentence.
 

fatbob

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I've been on glaciers on three different continents, but not the one at Whistler.

Sorry, but I'm not a global warming believer

So are the glaciers you've been on growing or retreating?
The Columbia icefield has some fairly posts marking where the snout has been over the past 50 years or so IIRC. Now a fair hike to the glacier from the parking lot.
 

James

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I am calling BS on a lack of snow in the spring/summer of 2017
So... you've never been to Whistler yet somehow know this? The guy shut down his business due to not enough snow to make large jumps. Doesn't mean there's no snow, they are racing and doing bumps there. Just not the quantity for aerials.

I've been on glaciers on three different continents, but not the one at Whistler.

Sorry, but I'm not a global warming believer
Not sure what that has to do with anything.
I have swum in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Mediterranean sea. It hardly makes me an oceanographer.
 
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Tricia

Tricia

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@James I have been there recently and I've talked to people who've been there for several years. Is the glacier changing? Yes. Is it changing enough that it put this guy out of business? I don't think so.
Friends who are close to the happenings at Whistler have an idea that something else is going on with this particular guy. So, yeah, I'm calling BS on his sob story.
 

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