VANCOUVER -- Day 10. The one is a visual metaphor for the still-lit torch, the zero a reminder that it will be out a week from now. Double digits represent the first sign that this tiny world-within-a-world has mortality, that this will not last forever, and that sooner or later we're all going to have to make exit plans.
Some of us are already practicing for the big goodbye by making small ones. This morning I left Whistler, the mountain resort two hours north of the city. Vancouver is a wonderful place. But as the largest metropolitan area to ever host the Winter Games (2.5 million, well ahead of previous recordholder Torino's 1.7 million), the Olympics do kind of get lost here. That isn't a problem up in the mountains, where every square kilometer is bursting with the spirit of the Games.
In five days, I uncovered many of Whistler's secrets. For instance, the mysterious checkpoint referred to on road signs all up and down Highway 99 (the "Sea-to-Sky") is a security block just north of midway point Squamish, designed to cut the flow of cars and only passable with an expensive permit. But the checkpoint is only operational from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. So one of the accomplishments of this setup is a long line of cars on the side of the road at 5:59 p.m., all waiting for the yellow-coated officers to pack up and leave for the night.
Whistler has always had an Olympic destiny, and the Winter Games are deep within its DNA. A half-century ago, the area was as untouched as much of the land along the sides of the Sea-to-Sky, a highway that didn't even exist then. Vancouver entrepreneurs (some with ties to the Seagrams), likely inspired by the success of Squaw Valley 1960 down south in California, hatched the crazy idea to build a resort and pitch it to the Canadian Olympic authorities as a potential 1968 bid candidate.
Grenoble, France eventually won those Games, and Canada chose Calgary as its bid city over Whistler. Sapporo, Japan was the host in 1972, and a second Whistler bid lost to Banff at the national level. But the area was built up enough after a decade of operation to be a viable site for 1976, but Montreal won the Summer Games. When Denver withdrew as host, Whistler was the IOC's first choice. The locals turned that idea down, and Innsbruck, Austria took on hosting duties for the second time in 12 years. The place wasn't really ready yet, anyway.
The population of Whistler in 1976 was barely triple digits. Now, there are over 10,000 people who live there all year round. They're hard to find these days, as temporary Olympic residency has overwhelmed their numbers. I was able to find a few of them at Lift, a quiet coffee house tucked away behind a couple of upscale chain hotels.
It's also doubling as the 1932/1980 Lake Placid Friendship House, and it's where the old crusty American Olympic fans meet, trade pins, and talk about how Eric Heiden could skate circles around these young whippersnappers. (They can also trade notes with the locals about the effect of the Olympics on a previously obscure resort town.) Not to get off on too much of a tangent, but it's also where you can find the best hot chocolate in Whistler Village, as well as gigantic slices of pie that'll knock your ski booties off.
A pleasant older Canadian lady named Emily told me to try the strawberry. She bought some speculative Whistler property back in the Eighties, and now makes enough from renters to read books all day and fly to Europe whenever she wants.
"None of this was here in 1980," she said, pointing idly to the Roni Raccoon mascot poster on the wall. "Everything you see here was built in the past 30 years."
Emily's investments didn't really take off until the turn of the century, when two major events occurred. First, glowing reviews from skiing magazines helped Whistler push past two million annual visitors. Second was the explosion of mountain biking, a summer sport that made its Olympic debut at Atlanta 1996. It turned out that the terrain surrounding Whistler was perfect for this pursuit, and the Internet was helping word spread quickly. Soon, the young set was descending on the new Whistler Mountain Bike Park -- in the warm months, making it a viable year-round resort.
"Do you know how much those bikes cost?" she asked rhetorically. "It's a sport with a very high barrier to entry. The equipment and the pads and everything... You have to be pretty well-off."
So money, old and new, was streaming into the area 12 months a year -- and soon there were more summer visitors than winter ones. With average temperatures of 73 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, and 30 in the winter, a lot of well-off people never wanted to leave.
Then, in 2003, when Vancouver-Whistler finally broke through with the International Olympic Committee and won the XXI Winter Games, part of the bid plan was an improved way to get between the two locales.
"When I first started coming here, 99 was scary," said John, a ruddy chap originally from Vancouver who vacationed in Whistler before moving into one of the new residential areas five years ago. "You'd be taking your life into your hands every time. There were drunk drivers, idiots going 125 [km/hr], tailgaters, and the fog would descend in the mornings. There were always news stories about the RCMP pulling cars full of dead people from the bottoms of cliffs. There was no outside wall, so they'd miss curves and simply fall off the highway."
In the past seven years, the Sea-to-Sky has become a real freeway. There are protective barriers all up and down the road, and it's been widened to accommodate four lanes. It's not quite finished, but the effects have been profound.
"I think Whistler is going to become more and more like a bedroom community for Vancouver," Emily said. "We're starting to see more young professionals here, who work online, go into the city for meetings, and ski and bike the rest of the time."
Now that's what I call a suburb! The effect of the Olympics on the city of Vancouver is, almost assuredly, massive debt. We won't know the extent of that for a while. And the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort, the centerpiece of this area's short history as a municipality, is in serious financial trouble itself. Intrawest, the private equity firm that bought the operation in 1986, failed to make a payment on a $1.7 billion dollar loan last month, and was scheduled for foreclosure auction this past week. (Interwest got a last-minute delay and the assets will go up for auction on Feb. 26.)
But Whistler is more than just a resort town now, and the infrastructure built over the past 25 years has economically diversified the area and made it immune to any sort of collapse. John and Emily don't seem too concerned; besides, it looks like the folks from Vail are going to pick up the property.
For John's part, he's more worried about the local non-human population.
"One of the romantic things to do in Whistler is to hang out by the garbage dump on a Friday night," he joked. "You can always find a date with a hot bear."
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