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Day 1 at Whistler started early – 7:30am to be precise. The alarm went off, and for once, everyone was up and about – except for Ed, as both Pip and I had decided to get up slightly earlier than what he had suggested. Unfortunately, the nightclub that I spoke of yesterday kicked on well into the night – 2 or 3am as far as I’m aware – and the noise was very prominent in the bedrooms. It seemed to be transmitted through the building structure itself – from the basement, to our 3rd floor room.

This caused a little unrest, and when Ed awoke, he was soon on the phone the the appropriate people to make a complaint about how bad the noise had been. It later emerged that the hotel had offered to move us to another room (the third for the stay here) late last night, but this had obviously been turned down – as much as repacking a whole suitcase and lugging them between floors in the middle of the night sounds like great fun. Instead, they suggested that we move to one of their ‘sleeping rooms’, only for the nights – which were specifically built for being quiet. Hmm… seems to me like they were looking for an easy way out of a significant problem.

Oh well – obviously, the sleeping room idea was rejected as well, and so we were back at square one. This morning, the hotel had offered to find another room for us, but they wanted us to move during the day – when we were going to be out on the slopes doing the one thing we came here to do. Ed informed the staff member that we would not be moving during the day, and that it would have to happen at the end of the day, if at all. The check-in member then informed us that the nightclub operated every night of the week – not just the weekends like we had originally thought. Icing on the cake I guess.

From here we had some breakfast and tried to get organised for the day’s skiing activities ahead, which was slowed down considerably by my inability to insert both of my contact lenses without trying again, and again, and again. Luckily, about 20 minutes later, that process was over – it seems I had lost some of the eye-poking skills I had gained in the week before we left. We continued to get ready, and eventually left the room – at 10:30am.

We moved down to the ski hire shop in the base level of the hotel, where our skis would normally be held overnight, but had last night received a nice tune-up. Unfortunately for Ed, he was informed that the wax on the bottom of his skis was too thin, and they were unable to perform a tune-up – he was going to have to buy new skis instead. Because they were still in good condition (relatively), he decided to ski the days here on the same skis and consider buying new ones before our next adventure.

From the ski shop, we walked the 10 minutes (or maybe slightly less) to the centre of the village to collect some lift tickets. Unfortunately, Ed’s voucher for tickets included extra members who were scheduled to share in the activities of the coming weeks. The attendant at the ticket window was unable to give us just 3 out of 4 tickets, and this meant that Ed was required to see someone at a Guest Relations desk inside one of the nearby main buildings. Pip and I observed the action from outside, and acclimatised to the weather at hand. While it was not shocking, compared to yesterday it was miserable – overcast, with snow flurries predicted. Today it was a few degrees below zero in the village, while hovering around -14C mid-mountain, and slightly cooler at -15C at the peaks.

Ed returned a few minutes later, with a success under his belt, and three lift tickets in hand. From here, we decided to head to Blackcomb, as this mountain had more lifts operating than did its partner Whistler. We climbed aboard the Excalibur gondola – yes, the one that collapsed a few weeks ago – and rode up as far as we could go. Then, we jumped on to the Excelerator which took us swiftly higher up the mountain. Because we had only spent one day here last year, we tried to do some runs that would expose us to as much different terrain as possible.

We skied down to the Crystal Chair, and took this up to the top. Ed recalled a nice run, and picked it out on the map as ‘Rock and Roll’. According to the digital board, this run was both open, and groomed – one of very few this morning apparently. We headed in this direction, and were a little taken aback when we reached the run (a blue run) to find it marked ‘out of bounds’. We assumed that the ski patrol must have run out of caution signs and had used these as a substitute, and continued on. A few metres later, we understood why it was marked as such.

Nice steep slopes, with large moguls, and much uncovered terrain was everywhere – there really was no escaping it on this slope. We made our way down slowly, avoiding as much as we could, and trying to let our legs adjust to the new movement that was skiing. After skiing for a while, we came across a nice groomed section of the run that intersected another trail. Obviously, this was where it was open from, and clearly the only part of the run they had actually groomed. We continued down until we reached the bottom, where we caught a similar sequence of lifts to try some other runs.

We ended up trying the conditions over at the 7th Heaven Express – an area that had been closed the entire time we were at Whistler last year. While the trail to the bottom of the lift was nice, and the runs below the lift looked nice, when we reached the top, we realised why it was quiet – total blizzard conditions ensued. Very strong winds, very cold temperatures, and fairly poor visibility. Yuck!

As cold as we already were, we moved as quickly as possible to get ourselves out of the conditions, and back to the Rendezvous cafeteria where we were to eat lunch. We arrived here not long after, and quickly moved inside out of the elements to thaw. Inside was busy, as always, but we found a table without too much effort. We had a relatively quick lunch, but by the time we left, it was nearly 2pm – not a great thing, because all lifts closed at 3pm.

We had decided at lunch to give Whistler a shot, and thanks to the new Peak 2 Peak Gondola, this was as simple as getting on a cabin in the next building over and riding the 11 minutes across between the peaks. This was rather uneventful, except for the cabin a few in front of ours having problems with the doors closing properly.

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Whistler was far superior to Blackcomb – in terms of runs available, snow quality, and even crowd levels. We managed to ski a number of runs here, before skiing back to the bottom of the hill at 3:15pm after our last ride up. Skiing from top to bottom sounds easy, but was something that took no less than about 45 minutes. Once we were at the bottom, we made the trek back to the hotel, and went to relax.

Unfortunately, our night was made a little less relaxing by the offer to relocate to a different hotel room being raised again. Ed had had a terrible night’s sleep, and so this wasn’t something that was going to be easily turned down. We agreed to be ready to move in half an hour, and so this involved repacking the entire two rooms. We met our target, and were ready to move by 5pm.

After relocating, for the second time in as many days, we unpacked everything again and went for a swim. The pool was heated, but outdoors – and could probably have done with a few more degrees heat. The spa was nice too, but again was on the chilly side. We spent an hour or so in the pool, then returned to the room and left for dinner.

We had assumed that Saturday night would be busier than Friday, and so decided to head straight to the Brewhouse which was likely to have the most space, and had a bar area where we could sit if there were no tables. We had a table in 20 minutes, and enjoyed a nice meal here. Following the meal, we stopped past the grocery store – yes, the alternative grocery store after yesterday’s shenanigans – and picked up a few supplies here.

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We returned to the room soon after, and watched, yes, more episodes of CSI:Miami as part of yet another ongoing CSI marathon. Due to the room shift, our access to the internet had been interrupted, and I spent many hours trying to get this to work again but with little success. Luckily, it has started working now and so I thought I should get this online before it disappeared again.

We plan to be up at a similar time tomorrow, and hopefully won’t have to shift rooms yet again. With any luck, I’ll be able to put my contacts in a little quicker, and we can get out on the slopes before housekeeping want to clean our room. Tomorrow’s forecast is for a high of -8C, with snowfall of 15-20cm expected. High winds are predicted, so conditions may not be great – but only time will tell.

Speak to you all soon, check out the photo galleries, keep reading the blog, and feel free to post comments on OnSno.com – the first time you do, there may be a delay; but it should be quick after that!