Winter at Cypress leads to summer of change

One place that definitely knows how to weather the brunt of a storm is Cypress Provincial Park. Just as Stanley Park has been shuttered this winter, so too were West Vancouver’s principal peaks—Black, Strachan, and Hollyburn—that bulwark Cypress’s southern flank. Some of B.C.’s (and the world’s) oldest trees crown the trio and proved their mettle again recently. The worst the nearly 1,200-year-old forest has to show for the tempests is a deeper than average snowpack, almost four metres.

The most elevated—and mood-elevating—way to see for yourself is to ride what Cypress Mountain’s Bobby Swain described to the Straight as “our boutique chair”. On the phone from his slopeside office, the development and operations manager of Cypress Bowl Recreation Limited, which has a long-term lease arrangement with B.C. Parks, was referring to the quaint two-seater Skychair that runs to the top of Mount Strachan, a respectable 1,440 metres above Howe Sound and within hailing distance of the Lions.

Swain explained that despite the many changes under way in advance of the 2010 Winter Olympics ski and snowboard events to be held at Cypress, none were planned for the poky Skychair. This must come as something of a relief to those skiing or riding on their own: one never knows where a chance encounter while sharing the Skychair might lead. Certainly, the odds of striking a romantic spark—or at least piquing a stranger’s interest in learning more about you—are a lot better than in the “four’s a crowd” atmosphere of Cypress’s two quad chairs.

Further on the subject of change, Swain was pleased to report that “slopewise, we’re competition-ready for 2010, at least as far as the freestyle venue is concerned. It’s possible that towards the end of the season we could move some snow into the landing area for moguls and freestyle in March.”

The new ski runs now end abruptly in the parking lot on the east side of Black Mountain. That will change when construction picks up again in the spring. The parking lot will be reapportioned elsewhere and two lifts installed to service not only the freestyle course but also 40 hectares of terrain with a total of eight new runs in an expanded zone on Black Mountain. “It’s going to be a big summer of construction in ’07, with a new detachable quad chair on Mount Strachan that will cut the lift time from 11 to four minutes,” he said. “Last year we roughed in about a third of the snowboard course on Black’s west side. That will be completed. The snow-making system will go in as well, plus we’ll start work on the new lodge facility in time for the ’08/’09 season.”

This is all good news, particularly for the amateur ski clubs that train throughout the winter at Cypress, as well as for community groups such as Chill, a snowboard program for 125 at-risk youth now in its third season. Richard Flower, president of the Vancouver Freestyle Ski Club, confirmed as much when contacted by the Straight. “Our enrollment is up because of the recent competitions we’ve been staging at Cypress, plus the excitement that’s building around 2010. Over the past couple of years, we’ve noticed that the management at Cypress is much more interested in supporting freestyle than previously.” Swain confirmed as much when he pointed out that “VANOC is fostering relationships between amateur associations and ourselves.”

Current trends in skiing and snowboarding are astonishingly simi ­lar. The days of “never the twain shall meet” are long gone, particularly when it comes to equipment. It’s been almost a decade since a pair of ski coaches at Whistler—Mike Douglas and Shane Szocs—adopted snowboards’ twin-tip design and applied it to skis. As Flower noted, “Young kids are coming out of snowboarding and back into skiing, especially as there’s such a wide variety of ski models to choose from.”

One need look no further than Cypress’s ever-expanding Terrain Park, which doubled in size over the past year, to see skiers and snowboarders practising aerial manoeuvres side by side. To that end, the VFSC not only offers coaching in traditional mogul ?and aerial disciplines, it also includes tabletop, or big-air, as well as terrain-park techniques in its program. Flower pegs the average range of the 80-member club at between 11 and 16.

When it comes to training and coaching, the Cypress Ski Club is out in front. In 2005, Alpine Canada Alpin honoured it as the best ski club in the country. Considering the competition from better-known organizations like the Whistler Ski Club, that’s high praise.

With the exception of the coaching staff, the club is run entirely by volunteers: parents of the young athletes and even some whose children have long since outgrown it. They draw their inspiration from these youngsters who train and compete with the intensity of world-class athletes. During the ski season, they are on the hill upward of 15 to 20 hours a week. Given the chance to breathe all that fresh air, you have to wonder how tough a chore that is. Not much, especially when there’s the prospect of the 2010 Games to draw on for inspiration.

ACCESS: For more information on all nine 2010 Winter Olympic facilities, including Cypress Park, visit www.vancouver2010.com/ . A detailed map of trails on both Black Mountain and Mount Strachan is available at www.cypressmountain.com/ . Both the Vancouver Freestyle Ski Club ( www.vancouverfreestyle.com/ ) and the Cypress Ski Club ( www.cypressskiclub.com/ ) have weekly day and evening practices scheduled at Cypress through April.