Whistler Blackcomb’s Peak 2 Peak Gondola is quite an incredible ride. With just four total towers, you feel like you’re floating over nothing while in the middle of the 2 mile long ride. It’s fascinating yet a bit terrifying, especially if you’re scared of heights. But the process of building the gondola was a lot more impressive than the ride itself.
The towers are certainly quite the impressive build, but the process of transporting and installing the cables has to be the wildest part of the project. Five ~90 ton spools of cable had to be transported by cargo ship from Switzerland (where they were made), across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, and up to the Port of Vancouver.
Then the cables were welded directly to a train so they could be brought from the base of Whistler Blackcomb, where they were loaded onto a 48-wheel Goldhofer Heavy-haulage trailer (which drove from Montreal to Whistler, across the continent) before being pulled up the mountain. With the help of three other trucks (two in front, one in back), the cables were brought up the mountain one at a time, taking 19 hours to get one spool from the bottom to the top of the mountain.
As if that wasn’t enough, all five cables then had to actually be installed into the towers. Since a helicopter wouldn’t be strong enough to thread the large cables, a smaller cable was first installed and used to pull the larger cables across the entire valley. How long did that process take? Oh, not that long, just a short 12 weeks to pull all the cables across.