Whistler, British Columbia, is a resort municipality nestled in the southern Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains. Located approximately 125 km north of Vancouver and 36 km south of Pemberton, Whistler is a popular destination for over two million visitors annually. The resort town is renowned for its alpine skiing, snowboarding, and mountain biking at Whistler Blackcomb. Its pedestrian village has won numerous design awards, and Whistler has been voted among the top destinations in North America by major ski magazines since the mid-1990s.
The Whistler Valley is located around the pass between the headwaters of the Green River and the upper-middle reaches of the Cheakamus. It is flanked by glaciated mountains on both sides; the Garibaldi Ranges on the side that contains the ski mountains, and a group of ranges with no collective name but that are part of the larger Pacific Ranges and are essentially fore-ranges of the Pemberton Icefield.
Before Whistler was founded, it was the shared ancestral territories of the indigenous Squamish people (Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh), known in English as the Squamish Nation, and L̓il̓wat7úl, known in English as Lil'wat First Nation (originally Srap7úl). Their history is tied to the rivers, lakes, and mountains that were used as reference for direction and travel.
The first British survey by the Royal Navy took place in the 1860s. These surveyors named the mountain London Mountain because of the heavy fog and cloud typically gathering around the mountain, but the area informally acquired the name "Whistler" due to the call of the hoary marmot.
In the 2021 Canadian census conducted by Statistics Canada, Whistler had a population of 13,982 living in 5,597 of its 10,065 total private dwellings, a change of 19% from its 2016 population of 11,746.
Whistler is known for its skiing and snowboarding in the winter and mountain biking and hiking in the summer. Other winter activities that are enjoyed in Whistler are cross country skiing, skate skiing, ice skating, snowshoeing, backcountry skiing, telemark skiing, and tobogganing.
Whistler was the Host Mountain Resort of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games, the first time the International Olympic Committee has bestowed that designation on a community.
Whistler is located on British Columbia Highway 99, also known as the "Sea to Sky Highway", approximately 58 km north of Squamish, and 125 km from Vancouver.
Whistler has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfb) or an oceanic climate (Köppen Cfb) depending on the isotherm used. It has cold wet winters with significant snowfall and cloud cover, and warm summers which are somewhat dry.
Whistler is a collection of microclimates ranging from coniferous mixed forest on the valley floor, to slightly drier slopes, to Alpine tundra in the alpine. The wet West Coast marine temperate climate in the valley floor is characterized by a coniferous mixed forest, with a preponderance of western red cedar—a continuation of the rainforest of the Pacific Northwest.
