WHISTLER-A Winter Sports Haven

WHISTLER
If you love winter sports, especially Skiing and Snowboarding a fantastic place to visit is the famous, world class ski resort of Whistler.

Whistler Mountain is conveniently located two hours north of Vancouver and four hours north of Seattle

Winter is the most popular time for people to visit Whistler Canada. As the winter months approach, people flock here to enjoy one of the world's top ski resorts.

Skiing and snowboarding are extremely popular here at this time of year, as the sales for the ski lifts show. Over two million ski lift passes are sold each year in winter and this figure is rising.

The Whistler ski resort is one of the largest on the continent with over two hundred trails and twelve Alpine bowls yet there is enough room for all visitors without it feeling too overcrowded.

Whistler offers two mountains for excellent skiing, these are Whistler Mountain at 2182 meters, with the longest run being eleven kilometers and Whistler Blackcomb Mountain at 2284 meters. Ticket passes provide lift and chair systems to both mountains from five bases located at the center of Whistler Village.

Whistler Village was purpose built and is great as it is mainly pedestrianized. The village provides an array of Whistler lodgings, Whistler hotels and Whistler chalets. There are also plenty of restaurants, bars, shops and apres ski activities to keep you entertained when you are not enjoying the skiing and snowboarding.

Whistler village also has two neighbours, Upper Village Whistler Blackcomb which is about a kilometer to the northeast of Whistler and Whistler Creekside which is about six kilometers to the south of Whistler village, the latter has just undergone a $50 million redevelopment which is hoped to give it's neighbour a little competition.

The skiing and snowboarding season on Whistler Mountain and Whistler Blackcomb Mountain starts in late November. Whistler Mountain stays open until the end of June, where as Whistler Blackcomb Mountain closes in April and re opens in June for the Horstman glacier skiing, which is one of the reasons Whistler is still popular throughout the summer months too.

Since 1980 Whistler has played host to world class events. December is the Snowboard FIS World Cup and April sees the World Ski and Snowboard Festival. Whistler is also going to host the 2010 Winter Olympics and once you have visited this area you can see why.