Whistler Skibus - Vancouver to Whistler, daily all season
Love the ride
Leave the car. Get to the mountain.
Board at one of five pickups with your skis and get off at the gondola. Up the Sea-to-Sky since 2003, no parking, no chains.
The route page for the corridor service
Airport pickup with ski and bag space
South side departures
East side departures
The Vancouver pickup point
Last pickup before the Sea-to-Sky
The ride back down
Getting to your flight home
Why the corridor is a designated route
Vans for small groups, the full coach for big ones.
Flying in
Land at YVR. Get on the bus.
There are three ways out of the airport and up the hill. Rent a car and learn British Columbia winter tyre law on a mountain pass. Pay for a private transfer. Or take the coach that is already going there, with the skis and the bags.
Book before you fly. Seats go on snowbus.com, and the busy weeks sell out well before you land.
The airport is on the route. YVR is a scheduled pickup, so the coach is the first thing in the trip and the last.
One drop-off, no transfers. Off at the Whistler Village bus loop and walk to the gondola with your gear.
No car in the snow. Nothing about chains, tyres, parking or a dark drive back becomes your problem.
Live here
You have driven it enough times.
You know which Saturday the 99 turns into a car park and which lot is full by nine. Gas, winter tyres, day parking and the drive home in the dark stopped adding up a few seasons ago.
Board near home. Five pickups across the Lower Mainland, not one downtown terminal.
Runs all season. Late November through April, daily, not just the holiday weeks.
Nobody has to drive. Sleep on the way up and stay for the last run and a beer after it.
Twenty years on this road. The corridor has had this service since 2003, on the same licence.
On the corridor since 2003
The bus that only goes to the mountain.
One route, run by one company, on the oldest still-active bus licence into Whistler. Board in the city, get off at the bus loop and walk to the gondola.
The 2020 coach carries a wrap drawn by hand, a mountain scene inside every letter, and LOVE THE RIDE under the window line where it has been since the first season.
Driving versus the bus
Highway 99 asks a lot of a car.
The Sea-to-Sky is a beautiful road and a demanding one. It climbs off the water into a mountain pass, it has no way around itself, and it is busiest exactly when the weather is worst. None of that changes. What changes is whether you are the one driving it.
It is a long way, twice
The better part of two hours up from Vancouver and the same back, and that is on a clear day with the road moving. Do it as a day trip and you have spent four hours behind the wheel to ski for six.
The road does not forgive inexperience
It goes from sea level into a pass in under an hour. Rain at the bottom is ice at the top, the corners are banked and blind, and conditions can turn between one pullout and the next. If you have not driven it in winter, the first time should not be in the dark.
One crash closes the whole corridor
There is no detour. When something happens ahead of you, the traffic does not reroute, it stops. People sit on that highway for hours, and there is nowhere to go and nothing to do about it.
Winter tyres are the law, not advice
North of Horseshoe Bay is a designated route from 1 October to 31 March. Tyres need an M+S or mountain-snowflake marking and at least 3.5 mm of tread. Turn up without them and you can be fined and sent back.
Then you have to park it
Whistler Village parking is paid day lots, and on a powder morning they fill early. The coach sets you down at the bus loop, a walk from the gondolas, with no lap of the lot and no digging the car out at four.
The drive home is the worst part
You are tired, your legs are gone, it is dark, and it is snowing harder than it was this morning. That is the drive people underestimate. On the bus that hour is a nap, and nobody at the table has to stay off the beers.
150,000+
Lifetime riders on the Skibus
2003
First season on this corridor
20+
Years on this corridor
Charter and groups
Take the whole bus for yourselves.
Ski clubs, staff trips, weddings, race weekends, a flight full of friends landing at YVR at the same time. Tell us the group, the date and where you are starting from, and we will come back with a plan and a price.
Small groups
A van, door to door
For a group too big for taxis and too small for a coach. Picked up where you are staying, dropped at the hill.
Large groups
The full coach
The same coaches that run the corridor, booked out for your group, with your own departure time instead of ours.
Flying in
YVR transfers
Landing as a group. We meet the flight and run straight up the Sea-to-Sky, with room for skis, boards and bags.
Enquire about a charter
Give us the date, the number of people and the pickup city. Charter dates in the season book early.
Membership
See member perks
Ski often? Join SnowClub.
SnowClub is the membership behind the mountain. It puts member pricing on the things a season actually costs you, starting with the bus.
Free to join. No fee and no tier to buy into.
Member pricing on the ride. Deals come to you rather than you hunting them.
Works across the corridor. Not just the bus, but what you do once you are up there.