It's been more than a decade in the planning and construction, but today Whistler's world-record-breaking £28 million cable car finally opens to the public. The Peak 2 Peak gondola stretches between the two separate mountains - Whistler and Blackcomb - that together make up North America's leading ski resort, meaning skiers no longer need to interrupt their day by descending to the resort to get from one to the other.

Never before has the opening of a cable car been the cause of such excitement and promotional activity. The resort is laying on a series of concerts and parties on the mountainside for paying guests.

Not everyone in the resort is going to be cheering at today's opening ceremony though. Local powderhounds are filling up chatrooms bemoaning the fact that so much money has been spent on a lift that doesn't give access to any new skiing terrain whatsoever. All it does, they argue, is cut out the three-minute walk through Whistler village, from the bottom of one mountain's pistes to the start of the existing lifts up the other.
Officials, however, are convinced it will give the resort a more European flavour, linking its disparate mountains into a unified whole, and will draw visitors to 2010s Winter Olympics here. Perhaps comparisons with Europe are unwise at the moment. For on its big, celebratory weekend, Whistler has a major embarassment on its hands - the lack of snow. Currently only a handful of runs are open, those are patchy and icy, and skiers are unable to ski back to the resort. Meanwhile the Alps are glorying in the best early conditions for at least 11 years - in Verbier, for example, they are having to use lorries to ship snow out of the village centre.

The good news is that snow is forecast for later today - a dusting of powder would be the perfect finishing touch for the shiny new gondolas.

Resort officials, who have been working on plans for the Peak 2 Peak since the 1990s, see this as far more than just another ski lift.

"I think this is going to add a whole new dimension and really differentiate us from all the other resorts in North America," says Rick Temple, the construction manager for the project. "This is an new icon for the resort, and today is the most exciting day in my 40 year career."

The brochure produced to mark the big day goes further still: "The Peak 2 Peak is more than a world record setting icon, it is a testament to the human spirit… proof of the power of optimism."

The main record the gondola sets is for the longest span between pylons - 3,024m. It also claims the greatest distance from gondola to ground, 436m, although this has the caveat "for a lift of this kind" (which means a "3S detachable gondola" if you want to be pedantic).

"To be honest, we needed a big span to get across the valley anyway, and when you have a span of 2,800m, you may as well add another 200m and get the world record," said Stefan Huter, project engineer for Doppelmayr, the Austrian company that carried out the project.

Yesterday I got a sneak preview of the new lift, and it is undeniably impressive. Each of the 28 gondolas carries up to 28 people, taking 11 minutes to cross the Fitzsimmons Creek valley. Most people might feel a twinge of vertigo as they hover 436m in the air, but just to make sure, two of the gondolas have a glass section in the floor. The views, from Fissile Peak in one direction, and back to Whistler resort and Rainbow Peak in the other, are stunning, and in summer hikers using the lift will have the chance of spotting black bear among the Douglas Firs below.

The engineers are proud of the fact that having so few pylons, with big gaps in between, keeps the lift's "footprint" to a minimum, and that because it travels horizontally across the valley rather than descending to the creek bed then climbing up the other side, it uses no more energy than a conventional chairlift.

Getting there

Tom Robbins traveled with Inghams (+44 (0)20 8780 4447; inghams.co.uk) which offers a week at the five-star Fairmont Chateau Whistler from £829 room only, including flights and transfers.

• For more on Europe's epic start to the ski season, read Tom Robbins's report from Verbier in Sunday's Escape section, in The Observer.