Cypress Mountain

This guide to Cypress Mountain in Vancouver centers on February 2010, when helicopters airlifted snow and straw onto the slopes just days before the Winter Olympics' freestyle and snowboard events were set to run on an unseasonably bare mountain. It traces the venue's fast eight-month construction in 2006 and reaches back further, to loggers cutting a road through in 1870 and a ski camp opening here in 1933. Best taken in from the lift, looking down the runs those first skiers only reached on foot.