Memories from three decades of the World Ski & Snowboard Festival.
“We almost scrapped it after year two,” says World Ski & Snowboard Festival (WSSF) founder and visionary Doug Perry. “It had flatlined.”
Year two would have been 1997, and to that point the festival was a collection of, you guessed it, skiing and snowboarding events like the Westbeach Snowboard Classic, the Couloir Extreme Race for steep skiing, the Whistler Cup (ski racing) and Doug’s own World Technical Ski Championships, a sort of decathlon of ski disciplines aimed to crown the world’s best all-mountain skier.
But the media attention and resort visits weren’t meeting expectations set by a great inaugural festival the year prior. Maybe the critics were right, maybe a ski and snowboard festival in the late spring was never going to work.
“We almost let it die,” Doug says. “I remember meeting with Whistler and Blackcomb—they were owned separately back then—and Tourism Whistler and I asked for a bit more time, then I went and found a music sponsor. Free music in the Village. That lit up the town.”
And one of the first bands to grace the first WSSF stage, built in the Village Square for the 1998 festival? Nickelback. “I think we paid them five hundred bucks and a case of beer,” Doug says.
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“They weren’t a big band at the time,” recalls Whistler icon Kristen “KR” Robinson, local coordinator and emcee for the musical acts that first year. “I think one of the band members was still working at Starbucks. Coffees were $1.95 back, then so people would get a nickel back.”
Unknown, but very loud, Nickelback shared the stage with Econoline Crush, Matthew Good Band and The Pursuit of Happiness. A deluge of noise complaints meant the stage had to be relocated to the base of the ski hills for subsequent festivals, but the concept stuck. People would come to town for free music, good skiing and the kind of vibe that only a homegrown Whistler festival could deliver.
A deluge of noise complaints meant the stage had to be relocated to the base of the ski hills for subsequent festivals, but the concept stuck.
“That’s always been the secret,” says Sue Eckersley, who joined Doug’s WSSF team in 1999 and took over as executive director in 2007. “The festival was a reflection of the community. The local businesses and residents were intricately woven into everything. Year over year we’d get more volunteers than any other event. It belonged to us all and it represented who we were.”
Which meant including arts events, biking, skateboarding, more music, raves, even an annual dog parade. “That was Doug’s brilliance,” Sue adds. “He taught us to let everything exist in an open format, don’t try to box events into a preconceived idea. Let things be what they become.”
Overall, the WSSF became one the biggest mountain-town parties on the planet (at its peak it also added an estimated $30 million to the local economy). Much has changed since the 90s—industries evolve, sports mature, sponsorship budgets ain’t what they used to be (and neither is the mid-April lower-mountain snowpack) and pandemics certainly don’t help—but stoke is high for the 2026 WSSF. (And we heard the arts events are returning to the conference centre!)
So to celebrate the past 30 years of the festival that helped show the world who Whistler was, we’re listing our top WSSF moments (the ones we can remember, anyhow). See you in April!
Moto Big Air in the Village (2015)
“The biggest challenge is working with the natural environment in April,” Sue Eckersley says. “Some years we have to convince the musical acts that they will not get electrocuted standing in torrential rain puddles on the stage. And other years there is no snow to do a big air.”
So, to keep the vibes high during a particularly snowless Village during the 2015 WSSF, operations manager Justina Armstrong put two huge inflatable jumps in Skiers’ Plaza and threw the first (and probably last) moto big air in Whistler Village. The photo sums up just how wild it actually was.
Blake Jorgenson vs. The World (2001)
“What if you had a living-room slideshow with all your favourite photographers, except the living room was huge?”
That concept—conceived in 1998 by Doug Perry and Colorado ski personality Jack Turner—was built off a wildly successful solo slideshow from Whistler’s Eric Berger the year prior. The Pro Photographer Showdown has since brought most of the world’s greatest adventure, outdoor and action sport photographers (including surf photography icon Aaron Chang and skateboarder J. Grant Brittain) to Whistler to showcase their life’s work.
But the best part was that the local photographers could hang, and in 2001 a 25-year-old Blake Jorgenson walked out of a dilapidated ski/shred/bike house in Whistler Creekside carrying a couple carousels of slides and a CD of atmospheric music. He won the Pro Photographer Search, which netted him the sole wildcard slot at the main event, which he also won. (Ten years later he came back to the Showdown with all new images and won it again.)
Poached Earth (2011)
In 2010, just months after the Winter Olympic Games left town, Mountain Life editor Feet Banks slow-motion jogged into his hosting gig at the 72-Hour Filmmaker Showdown in his finest white suit and red mittens, carrying a three-foot joint rolled to look like the Olympic torch. But the real star of the Filmmaker Showdown has always been the films.
“We thought people were going to submit ski and snowboard films,” Doug Perry says of the event, which gives filmmaking teams 72 hours to shoot and edit a three-to-five-minute film. “But that is not what happened at all! Ryan Harris won the first event with a hilarious film about his last cigarette, and that changed everything.”
The shred filmmakers eventually got their own event (Intersection) but since the original showdown in 2000, sleep-deprived narrative filmmaking teams have been scrambling to hand their films in under the deadline.
Since the original showdown in 2000, sleep-deprived narrative filmmaking teams have been scrambling to hand their films in under the deadline.
And few films have been better received than Jonny Fleet’s 2011 masterpiece Poached Earth, an Attenborough-nature-documentary-style flick about a time-honoured Whistler tradition: sneaking into hot tubs you aren’t supposed to be in (with or without your clothes on).
Sarah Burke: Big Air, Don’t Care (2001)
The Westbeach Invitational was the first big air held in the Village (and a precursor to WSSF as we now know it) but our fav big air event is the 2001 World Skiing Invitational Orage Big Air when Sarah Burke stepped up to compete with the dudes because there was no big air category for women. She’d hit the same jump, throw down with the same intensity, and demonstrate to the world that the ladies belonged.
Skate and Deploy (2009)
Organized with the Whistler Skateboard Association (shout out to Lenny Rubenovitch and Brian Hockenstein, plus park builder Seb Templer and Spectrum in Vancouver), Skate and Deploy saw 20-plus pro skaters come for a wallride comp, street obstacle sessions, and a big air over this dilapidated Volvo wagon.
But skating has deeper roots at WSSF. The earliest fests included a vert ramp in Mountain Square, and in 2005, alongside an unofficial premiere of the film Lords of Dogtown, some of the best skateboarders in the world rolled into town for Park ‘n’ Ride—an underground throwdown in the lower levels of the Whistler Conference Centre parkade. “Park ‘n Ride sent us a cease and desist letter for the name,” Sue Eckersley recalls. “So we knew it was a true skate event.”
Sushi Village Moustache Appreciation Night (2002)
The best ideas spread like a virus and the vibe of the WSSF was so infectious, Sushi Village waiter/artist Chili Thom decided to get in on the fun. In 2001, Chili forced male Sushi Village employees to grow “cop-regulation” moustaches and hosted the first Magnum, P.I. Appreciation Night, which included awards for Greasiest ‘Stache, Most Fitting, Best Acreage and more. Over the next decade the event evolved into a general moustache competition and became one of the best parties of the festival. Tom Selleck was invited, but declined to attend.
Chili forced male Sushi Village employees to grow “cop-regulation” moustaches and hosted the first Magnum, P.I. Appreciation Night…
The Snowball Fight (1999)
It made the national news—a “near riot” as thousands of skiers and snowboarders hurled snowballs from the cobblestones of Skiers’ Plaza towards the stage and, even more so, the VIP tents (and hot tubs) on the GLC deck.
“We’d had a lot of snow that year,” Kristen Robinson recalls. “And there was a lull while the judges were sorting out the big air results of the Westbeach Classic. Some people had probably smuggled a few beers into the village, and yeah. Sloan was playing and I think the snowballs started on the third of fourth song. It was a bit loose, but we learned for the next year.”
Rave On! Playhouse (2001)
If the fact that the municipality of Whistler allowed WSSF to host an all-night rave that ended at 8 a.m. doesn’t blow your hair back in disbelief, how about the fact that it was held in the bowling alley? That’s right, Whistler had a bowling alley (and arcade), and for the penultimate WSSF end-of-festival all-night rager, DJ Michael Ziff, party master Ace MacKay-Smith and their band of magic makers turned it into a bona fide (and sanctioned) rave, complete with giant teddy bears, adult-sized jolly jumpers and three separate rooms of DJs spinning real vinyl records.
“We had to make a speech and plead our case to police and politician alike,” Ace says, “but we did it.”
The WSSF raves became just another thread of the tapestry, eventually evolving into The End, a series of hugely popular DJ throwdowns in the Conference Centre (pictured left) that would close out the fest through the 2000s and 2010s.
State of the Art
The first free art shows in the foyer of the Conference Centre were actually called BRAVEart, but the State of the Art put even more power in the hands of the 70 or so visual artists given the opportunity to display and sell their artwork over the course of the WSSF. Featuring live art demonstrations and kick-ass launch parties, almost every Sea to Sky artist of the past 25 years can credit the State of the Art show with helping them gain massive visibility (and sales) at an important time in their careers. Of the people, for the people, and free, this one might be the WSSF’s most impactful event ever.
NAS (2013)
There’s always gonna be people who will tell you that the Black Eyed Peas/Justin Timberlake show was the largest WSSF crowd ever (and Sue Eckersley swears it was) but real G’s know there’s more to a good time than numbers (even though that show was definitely hopping).
Our favourite free concert went down in 2013, when New York hip hop legend Nas took to the stage in front of a veritable sea of WSSF revelers and delivered a near-perfect set. Runners up include Toots and the Maytals at Moe Joe’s, Fort Knox Five with their live band, Ruby Waters (last year!)—and that time Emily Haines from Metric kept telling people to rush the stage except the barriers were just fences from the ski lift maze because it was a weekday and Metric were supposed to be mellow. (They were not.)
Make ‘Em Yourself
The final item on this best-of list is open; it’s yours to create. The 2026 WSSF runs April 6 to 12. Get out there and make some memories of your own. Party in April, sleep in May, and we’ll see you at the Slush Cup! – ML Staff
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