ecosign

PEAK 2 PEAK GONDOLA
The Peak 2 Peak Gondola is a record-setting 3S (3 ropes) aerial tramway that was constructed
by Doppelmayr during the summers of 2007 and 2008.This ropeway connects the Rendezvous
Restaurant on Blackcomb Mountain with the Roundhouse Restaurant on Whistler Mountain in
Whistler, British Columbia, Canada.
The total length of this new ropeway is
4.4 kilometers and the 28-passenger
gondola cabins traverse the Fitzsimmons
Valley in approximately eleven minutes.
The highest point off the ground, in the
center of the span, is 436 meters above Fitzsimmons
Creek. The Peak 2 Peak Gondola
will hold four new world records:
● 4.4 km – longest lift of its type
● 3024 kilometers – longest length of unsupported
span
● 436 meters – highest point above the
ground for a cable system
● 13.56 km – longest connected tourist
ropeway system
History – the big idea
The genesis of the Peak 2 Peak Gondola
occurred on February 17, 1997 when
Hugh Smythe, President of Intrawest Resort
Operation Group, and Paul Mathews,
President of Ecosign Mountain Resort
Planners Ltd., based in Whistler, British
Columbia, were on a technical visit to
Switzerland. After inspecting the new 150passenger
aerial tramway from Blauherd to
Rothhorn in Zermatt, they were in a helicopter
on a flight towards the famed Matterhorn,
and Mathews pointed out a silver
thread in the sunlight which links the
Trockener Steg station to the Klein Matterhorn.
Mathews commented that the distance
between the last tower on Mayer’s
Plateau to the Klein Matterhorn was 2.7
kilometers. Smythe asked the relevance of
that fact and Mathews replied, “That is the
same distance from the bottom of the Harmony
Chair on Whistler Mountain to the
bottom of the 7th Heaven Express on
Blackcomb Mountain.” The big idea for
the P2P was born that day.
Mathews’ company, Ecosign, has been responsible
for master planning at Whistler
and Blackcomb since the mid 1970s. Upon
returning home from Switzerland, Mathews
and Smythe commenced drawing up the
first plans for a link between the two
mountains.
With the technology available in 1997, it
was possible to achieve a capacity of 1125
persons per hour with a 125-passenger aerial
tramway cabin or 1350 persons per hour
with a 150-passenger cabin. The thought in
those days was that this would just be a link
for skiers and snowboarders during the winter.
The initial concept was for a reversible
aerial tramway to cross Fitzsimmons Valley
with no intermediate support tower. The
cost of about CAD $15 million dollars
(1997) seemed astronomical at the time,
but the concept was intriguing.
Is the Peak 2 Peak a ski lift, a transportation
solution or just a big WOW factor?
Actually, Ecosign and Whistler/Blackcomb
believe that the Peak 2 Peak Gondola is all
three.
A fantastic ski lift
Hugh Smythe has always described
Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains as two
large mushrooms sitting side by side. There
is the slender stalk up to a large cap on each
mountain, with the stalk representing the
access systems from the valley floor and the
mushroom caps representing the large
alpine bowls on each mountain. Both
Whistler and Blackcomb have three major
climatic zones, delineated by elevation: the
lower mountain, from 775m up to about
1250 meters, the sub-alpine one from 1250
to 1900 meters, and the alpine zone rising
up to 2250 meters. Blackcomb has two access
systems, the Excalibur Gondola from
Whistler Village (with an angle station at
Base II) and the Wizard Chair from the
Blackcomb Benchlands. Blackcomb has
four high-alpine zones including 7th Heaven,
Jersey Cream Bowl, the Horstman Glacier
and the Blackcomb Glacier. The capacity
of the sub-alpine and alpine zones on
Blackcomb Mountain is 13,500 skiers per
day. Whistler Mountain currently has three
access systems including one from Whistler
Creekside, at 650 meters elevation, up to
the Roundhouse, at 1,835 meters, and two
from Whistler Village: the Whistler Village
Express Gondola and the Fitzsimmons and
Garbanzo detachable quad chairlifts.
Whistler has five alpine bowls: West Bowl,
Whistler Bowl, Glacier Bowl, Harmony
Bowl and Symphony Bowl. Whistler has a
capacity of about 18,000 skiers per day in
the sub-alpine and alpine zones. Hence, the
reference to two large mushrooms.
The mountains are so large and total journey
time from Whistler Peak or Blackcomb
Peak down to Whistler Village and back up
the companion mountain is so long that
skiers generally choose one mountain over
the other on any given day. It is also very
inconvenient to change from one mountain
to the other in response to the conditions
such as fog, blowing snow, wind or simply
crowding. The Peak 2 Peak Gondola will
change all of that forever! Customers will be
able to change mountains at high elevation,
from one mountain restaurant to the other,
in just eleven minutes.
A transportation solution
Concurrent with the first idea for the Peak
2 Peak Gondola, Ecosign was hired by the
Resort Municipality of Whistler to draw up
a comprehensive transportation strategy for
the resort. The thinking then was that it
would be necessary to build a road from
Function Junction, at the entrance of the
Resort Municipality of Whistler, that bypassed
Whistler Creekside to move large
flows of traffic directly to Whistler Village.
This by-pass road, including intersections
and bridges, had an estimated cost of about
CAD $85 million (1997 dollars). It was also
considered that Highway 99, within the
Resort, would almost surely have to be
widened to four lanes to accommodate the
ever increasing volume of traffic. Armed
with the new idea for the Peak 2 Peak,
Mathews and consulting transportation engineer
Reid Crowther built a model of the