Men's Journal

The Peak 2 Peak connects Whistler's Roundhouse Lodge to Blackcomb's Rendezvous. Photo credit: courtesy Randy Lincks/Whistler Blackcomb

by Martin Mulkeen

“This is going to change everyone’s mentality about how they go skiing here,” says big mountain skier Ian McIntosh about the Whistler Blackcomb resort’s new, $52 million Peak 2 Peak Gondola. “It looks crazy. It’s hard to believe they were even able to build this thing.” Starting December 12, the state-of-the-art Austrian system will employ 28 dangling cabins (two with glass bottoms) to shepherd as many as 2,050 passengers per hour. They’ll cross the 2.73-mile gap between the resort’s two previously platonic mountains in a mere 11 minutes, giving powder lovers even more access to North America’s largest ski resort (it has more than 8,000 acres of skiable terrain). If you can’t make it to what is now the longest unsupported span on Earth (it’s a whopping 1.88 miles across Fitzsimmons Creek, at 6,069 feet above sea level), check out the Discovery Channel’s documentary about the two-year project, Peak 2 Peak, airing this spring.

This article originally appeared in the January 2009 issue of Men’s Journal.

Print this article