Cypress Bowl Road is open in summer all day and night. In winter, the road is closed between 11 PM and 7 AM. Here are somewhat random comments on the winter road closure.

If BC Parks has any interest in dealing with demand exceeding capacity on the North Shore (of parking lots, trails, facilities), it would make sense to open the access roads earlier or have them always open except in a severe snow storm, just like any other highway in BC.

It is important to clarify that it is the road that is closed not the park. Cypress Provincial Park is always open.

Paul Kubik spoke in spring 2017 with Jesse Morewood, an area supervisor with Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure in the Squamish/Whistler office, about the road closure. Mr. Morewood stated,

1. Mainroad Howe Sound Contracting LP maintains Cypress Bowl Road in summer under contract to MoTI.
2. Cypress Resort maintains the road in winter under a separate contract to MoTI. The terms of the contract are for snow clearing and de-icing between 7 AM to 11 PM. Ostensibly, that is the reason for opening the road at 7 AM.
3. Cypress employees drive the road between 11 PM and 7 AM but MoTI says it's okay because the resort has insurance to cover them driving the road. Mr. Kubik has not been able to verify that statement. It appears specious. After all, the road is either closed or open and everyone must have insurance to drive a vehicle.
4. A Cypress employee mans the booth at Chippendale Road from 11 PM to 7 AM.

The reason given that the public cannot drive the road is that it is not maintained after 11 PM. This might make sense if there is overnight snow or ice. But the roads are closed until 7 AM in any weather, including when it is dry or temperatures are above 0 degrees Celcius, like often in spring. The only logical reason for the set road closures is that the resorts want to control access so they don't need more staff on the mountains to guard the ski runs, facilities and equipment.

One twist that was discussed with Mr. Morewood was that unofficially, the booth operator allows cabin owners to use the road when it closed. The second twist is that cabin owners can drive down the road before 7 AM to go to work because there is no one at the top to stop them. Mr. Morewood said that should not happen since the road is closed. The question was asked, what if there was a medical emergency? These lines of thought expose a certain inequity or inconsistency in the position of MoTI and the resort. The MoTI supervisor seemed to think that no one lives permanently or is allowed to live permanently in the cabins therefore they do not need to go to work. However, certain knowledge is that people are living on the mountain. There is at least one cabin on West Lake Road that appears to be occupied year round.

These twists brought forward this comment from a member of the Recreation and Conservation committee of the Federation of Mountain Clubs of B.C.

That’s correct, the Hollyburn cabin owners are not allowed to live in their cabin as these are recreational cabins, licenced/leased (and quite closely regulated) by West Vancouver, i.e. leased to the 130 or so Hollyburn Cabin Owners, and located on municipal land, but the land at the West Lake Bend just below the Cabin Owners’ parking lot/access road is private [freehold] land with several sizeable ‘cabin’  lots dating from the 1940’s. I recall an article where it noted that one ‘private’ cabin owner was a Federal cabinet minister who bought his lot with his paper round money in that era. There also was a Buddhist temple in there at one point that got in trouble for building without a permit. The private land is outside the park but within West Vancouver Lands. It is doubtful there is any restriction on residence for them as there are just a few privately owned lots with cabins. However it is within the municipality and subject to their bylaws, plus West Vancouver has been buying them up whenever they can. How many remain would require some research. I.e. The private cabins are not the ‘Hollyburn Cabin area’ with the numerous cabins adjacent to the Nordic ski area.

The private lands area may have been on the radar for townhouses or similar development, as it’s the only sizeable flat land in West Van and is largely owned by the municipality but it is thought that approach is now excluded by the new community plan.

It’s probably true that some Hollyburn cabin owners are allowed to pass through at the ‘gate’ overnight, and this may be due to the longstanding neighbourliness arrangement of the ski hill towards the cabin owners as a group, where for example they use the Hollyburn Lodge* for a heritage event once a year and get a special discount on nordic ski passes: plus they reportedly include some of the oldest established families in West Vancouver, so most likely there is a longstanding unofficial agreement on this (plus some of the commercial X-C ski runs like Grand National are outside the park and are in the cabin area...on West Van land.)

Cypress Bowl Road is currently blockaded in winter at Chippendale Road. It moved there from the West Vancouver works yard lower down in winter of 2017. Presumably the blockade will have to be gradually moved up the mountain as further housing development proceeds, but their rationale for keeping the road closed has been that they need until 7 AM to clear the highway after snow. As it’s a Provincial highway (not a city street- although they did try to unilaterally download it on to West Vancouver about 15 years ago to save costs - it was promptly refused) where the snowclearing has been paid for by Ministry of Transportation and Highways since about 1986 or ‘87, it’s not clear why it then should be treated differently from other provincial highways on this basis, i.e. they don’t close the Sea to Sky highway till 7am.

*The historic 1923 Hollyburn Lodge was recently rebuilt at a cost of about $1.2 million, with the original ‘seed’ funding coming from VANOC – i.e. part of the 2010 Olympic Heritage funds that we were negotiating for trail work, but with the majority of funds then provided by the ski hill owners, and I think some funding and legal help (and years of delays) from the municipality, - so there are several layers of overlapping agreements, formal and informal, attached to this area.