OnSno.com

Today started just as early as yesterday – 7am again. We enjoyed the short lift queues and conditions early on, and so wanted to enjoy another day to the fullest potential once again. We had breakfast downstairs, as was becoming tradition, and then we returned to the room to complete getting ready to hit the slopes.

The weather was clear skies, and sunshine – a temperature inversion made it very balmy at the top of the mountain (was about -4C, while in the village at the bottom it was -12C). Instead of tackling the gondola again as we had done yesterday, we took the Fitzsimmons Chair from the base of Whistler. We enjoyed Whistler so much the day before that we decided to skip Blackcomb again, and return to Whistler. Unlike the gondola, which had a small queue, the chair had no queue at all and we skied right up – to get to the top of the gondola, however, it took three separate chair rides… quite an effort really, but no where near as squishy as the gondola had been.

Upon reaching the top, we skied immediately over to the Symphony area, as Tess had missed out on doing this the day before, as she had skied down the mountain and not rejoined us after lunch. It appeared that many other people had had the same idea to head to this area first thing, as the lift queues were longer than they had been previously – although, it was nowhere near bad, seeing as we never waited longer than a few minutes at a time. After skiing a few new runs here, including some glade runs through the trees and a venture into Rhapsody Bowl, we decided that it was time for lunch.

Tess, once again, decided she would head to the bottom to meet Nat for lunch, while Pip, Ed and I dined again at the Roundhouse. We admired the views that the excellent weather had provided us with while we ate, and once again wondered how there could be so many skis at the front when it was so quiet inside – but we certainly weren’t complaining about the lack of company.

After lunch, those of us who were left on the mountain ventured down to the Whistler Creekside area – another area of this massive mountain that we had previously avoided due to the lift bottleneck at the bottom. We thoroughly enjoyed the run down, skiing the Olympic Women’s Downhill course in (not so) record time, and then caught the Creekside gondola back up to ‘midstation’. From here, we were required to catch the Red Chair to return to the top of the mountain.

Upon returning to the top, we coincidentally bumped into Tess and Patrick, who had returned to the top in search of us. Pat was supposed to be teaching, but due to a lack of students (and an abundance of teachers) had been placed on standby meaning that he would still be paid while he burnt some time with us. We revisited some of the areas that we had skied previously that day and the day before, and took Pat to some places that he hadn’t been before – not bad for someone who had been here for over a month this year, and more than that last year!

After wearing everybody out, we skied to the bottom of the hill and caught the Blackcomb gondola back up to return to the accommodation. Pat did the same, as he was very close to where we were staying. We planned to catch up for dinner, but everyone needed to rest their legs and have a drink or two before we thought about eating. Pat arrived at our room about 4:30pm, and we soon after headed for the village for dinner.

We returned to Mongolie Grill, which we had enjoyed two nights prior (and which Pat had heard great things about, but never experienced himself). Pat took the prize of the night, serving himself a 1.5kg plate of Asian cuisine… he did, however, have to take a box close to the end, as the Mongolie-sized meal proved to be slightly too much. Everyone enjoyed the meal greatly, and we returned to our accommodation soon after finishing.

Pat had managed to get Wednesday off from teaching, and so was going to spend the day with us. We all fell quickly asleep, exhausted after a long day on the slopes (and in the sun), and wanted to be well rested before another (relatively) early start the next morning, and another action-packed day on the slopes of Whistler.

Stay tuned – I’ll try and put up the final Whistler day’s report sometime tomorrow, if I get a chance before we leave Vancouver. Hope to have everything (except maybe the photos, which may need culling before they hit the galleries) up to date before we leave here, but have to see how we go!

Looking forward to seeing everyone soon!