Whistler

Sister cities

• Karuizawa

History

The Whistler Valley is located around the pass between the headwaters of the Green River and the upper-middle reaches of the Cheakamus. It is flanked by glaciated mountains on both sides; the Garibaldi Ranges on the side that contains the ski mountains, and a group of ranges with no collective name but that are part of the larger Pacific Ranges and are essentially fore-ranges of the Pemberton Icefield. Although there are a few other routes through the maze of mountains between the basin of the Lillooet River just east, the Cheakamus-Green divide is the lowest and most direct. Before European settlement, the Lilʼwat First Nation and Squamish Nation both used the Whistler area, which they called Cwítima and Sḵwiḵw, respectively. They also shared a village known as Spó7ez at the confluence of Rubble Creek and the Cheakamus River south of Whistler. Spó7ez, a hub of trade and commerce, was buried after the Black Tusk volcano erupted. Both Nations continued to cohabit the region, travelling to the area in the warmer months, where they established seasonal camps for hunting and trapping. Spó7ez was re-populated until it was destroyed by another rock slide in the 1800s. The first British survey by the Royal Navy took place in the 1860s. These surveyors named the mountain London Mountain because of the heavy fog and cloud typically gathering around the mountain, but the area informally acquired the name "Whistler" due to the call of the hoary marmot. In the late 19th century, the Lillooet Cattle Trail was cut through the valley, linking Lillooet via Pemberton with Burrard Inlet via a pass from Squamish to the Seymour River. The trail was completed in 1877, but because of the difficult and unforgiving terrain, it was only used once for its intended purpose, which was to drive…

Geography

Whistler has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dsb/Dfb) or a Mediterranean climate bordering on an oceanic climate (Köppen: Csb/Cfb) depending on the isotherm used. It has cold wet winters with significant snowfall and cloud cover, and warm summers which are somewhat dry. On average, Whistler receives approximately 11 days with temperatures over and approximately 24 days with temperatures falling below . }} Whistler is a collection of microclimates ranging from coniferous mixed forest on the valley floor, to slightly drier slopes, to alpine tundra in the alpine. The wet West Coast marine temperate climate in the valley floor is characterized by a coniferous mixed forest, with a preponderance of western red cedar—a continuation of the rainforest of the Pacific Northwest. The slopes are slightly drier and are also coniferous mixed forest with western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) and mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana), Whistler hybrid spruce (Sitka spruce, Picea sitchensis and Engelmann spruce, Picea engelmannii). The last is "a hybrid spruce that is unique to Whistler, aptly dubbed the "Whistler Spruce". "The Whistler spruce hybrid is indicative of Whistler's geographic position—we're not quite coastal, but not quite interior". lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta), and endangered whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis). The higher slopes transition to many species of scrub juniper (genus Juniperus), Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum), and many species of scrub willow in the genus Salix at the tree line, and to Arctic tundra-like conditions in the high alpine above the tree line. Both the valley floor and the mountain sides are characterized as mixed forest, predominantly conifers, but with a peppering of a few deciduous trees like the…