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A Globetrotting Guide to
the Internet Skiing in Vancouver: A History
The history of skiing on the North Shore mountains goes back to the early 1900s when the only way to the top of the mountain was under your own power and the first four decades of skiing had more in common with backcountry wilderness skiing than the recreation that exists today. The first skis to touch snow on Grouse Mountain were probably those of Swedish immigrant Rudolph Verne, who later opened a sporting goods store to promote the new form of recreation to Vancouver residents. His account of a 1911 trip to Grouse first appeared in Polly Pogue's Hiker and Skier magazine in 1933 as part of a four-part series on the history of skiing in the Dominion of Canada. The early outdoor enthusiasts had to take a ferry from Stanley Park, then follow a crude trail from the end of the Lonsdale Street streetcar line up the side of the mountain. The first expeditions took three days; two days to reach the summit and another day to get back down. As early as 1911 Grouse Mountain's commercial recreational potential was recognized with the idea to run an incline-railway from Capilano Lodge upstream and around the mountain to the summit. World War I put an end to the idea but skiing and cabin building soon followed after the construction of a toll road known as Skyline Drive in 1924. A year later a full-service chalet opened offering accommodation, meals and dogsled rides. In 1949 Joseph Wepsela constructed the first double chairlift in North America. The lift started at Skyline Drive and went up to the Ski Village, the base of the present-day Cut chairlift. Two years later a second chairlift was completed. The Vancouver Sun started to offer free skiing lessons in 1952 and later that year Grouse hosted the Canadian Amateur Ski Championships. By this time hundreds of cabins, some privately owned and others owned by ski clubs, had been built. Although Grouse was a good ski hill, the immigrant Scandinavian loggers who had brought the sport over from Europe felt that Hollyburn Ridge was better. By the early 1920s, the logging to the lower slopes of Hollyburn was finished. The Naismith Mill on the mountain's lower slopes was no longer in use, and in 1925 Rudolph Verne and his Norwegian friends occupied the logger's bunkhouses and established a ski camp. The Naismith mill site proved to be impractical because of its low elevation, and Verne and company hauled the bunkhouse by horse cart to First Lake, 500 metres higher. Mount Seymour was slower to develop than Grouse or Hollyburn. First climbed in 1908 by a B.C. Mountaineering Club party, the mountain saw no winter activity until 1929 when two members of the rival Alpine Club, Mr. and Mrs. R.J. Shaich, made the first ski expedition to Seymour. The club built a cabin for its members and immediately began to make use of the area. Although not as quick to gain popularity as Grouse and Hollyburn, James Sinclair did a survey of the North Shore mountains for the provincial government, identifying Mount Seymour as having "the highest amount of recreation potential." In 1937 it was dedicated as a provincial park. << Next: << Next: Ski Resource Directory >> >> << Return to Home Page >>
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