The record-breaking cableway will span 4.4 km between Whistler Mountain, which is 2,182 m high, and Blackcomb Mountain, which is 2,440 m. The gondola system will be built by the aerial cable car specialists Doppelmayr (Austria) and Garaventa AG (Switzerland) and will surpass two world records at one go. The distance between the two support­ing masts which are set the farthest apart from each other will be 3,024 m. Also, the gondolas will dangle 415 m above the floor of the Fitzsimmons Creek val­ley – the highest ever in the history of aerial cable car construction.

To start off, the approximately 460 t of towing and carrying cables were loaded onto an inland barge in the Rhine river port of Basel. From there the heavy load sailed down the river to Vlisslingen (Netherlands). The steel cable reels were then transferred a vessel operated by the global shipping line Star Shipping, before setting out on their journey of several weeks across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Panama Canal, and up the Pacific west coast of the USA to Vancou­ver WA (USA). This port was chosen because of its 140 t Liebherr cranes, which were capable of handling the massive reels without difficulty.

The next-to-last part of the journey between Vancouver and the US-Canadian border was arranged on special railway wagons operated by the US based Burlington Northern & Santa Fe (BNSF). At the frontier, responsibility for the load was transferred to Canadian National Rail (CN Rail), for carriage to Whistler. The transfer of the steel cable units from the railway cars to suitable Goldhofer heavylift trailers was achieved with the help of a hydraulic sliding system. Fi­nally, the reels were hauled up Whistler Mountain by truck.

This was where what may have been the trickiest part of the undertaking began – to convey the steel cables to the aerial tramway construction site on the mountain. The task required the shipment to overcome gradients of up to 21.5%.