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Day 11 started even later than yesterday – we pressed sleep on the alarm a few times, and didn’t get out of bed until close to 8:30am (lazy in Ed’s book). Ed was up and showering already, and so Pip and I started on breakfast. We took a little while to be completely ready to go, but finally left the room at just after 10am. The hotel shuttle was too hard to resist, again, and so we took the easy way out to the base of the lifts.

It was as cloudy as yesterday, but it looked a little more bleak – there was some light rainfall and so we tried to move as quickly as we could and get on a lift. Today’s lift of choice was the Excalibur Gondola, to the top this time, however. The top of the lift was still covered in thick cloud, and so we decided to continue uphill using the Excelerator which took us another level higher up the mountain. Unfortunately, it was still cloudy here, and so rather than just seeing the same foggy conditions, we decided to take yet another lift up and jumped on the Jersey Cream (after a short ski down).

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The Jersey Cream did pop out of the cloud, finally, but only at the very top. This left us with about 100m (vertical) of skiing before we were in the cloud again – much less than yesterday had provided. We decided to try a run down to the Cat Skinner chair, but through the course of the day didn’t actually take this chair at all. In all cases, we took the Solar Coaster instead – it was a much longer run, but by all measures, much, much faster to get back to the top. It was a strange weather, as it was perfectly clear at the top, cloudy immediately after this, clear again somewhere in the middle, but cloudy again below this. Of course, it cleared again at the village level, but this didn’t concern us much now from up here.

We did a few of these runs, back to the top, and down to the Solar Coaster, trying a few new runs on the way, until we got too hungry to go on. Not before we tried the Sea to Sky Railway, however. This was a run through the trees, created for the Ski School kids (Whistler Kids around here), but had been closed yesterday. It was open today, but possibly lacking some snow in parts. It was a bit of fun, and led us back to the Solar Coaster in a similar time as other ways down.

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Once we returned to the top this time we decided to stop for lunch. We had a quick check for UFOs, but saw nothing and continued inside to find a table. It was a little hectic, but we soon found a place to crash and had a fairly usual lunch. I had a sandwich, however – shock horror I know – and generally our meal was much healthier than normal. It was just as expensive though – around $20 for the two of us.

After a slowish return to the slopes, at close to 2pm, we decided to head back towards the Jersey Cream, and possibly try the Glacier chair which we hadn’t done this trip. Pip decided, however, that she had done her quota of skiing for the day, and so instead we skied down to the base of the Excelerator chair where she could download back to the village. This was the easiest way to get back to ‘known’ territory – without risking getting lost anywhere along the way. After Pip was happy knowing the way back to the hotel, Ed and I continued skiing and headed to the 7th Heaven Express – where we had been yesterday and enjoyed the brilliant views all around.

Unlike yesterday, however, we took a slightly different run to get to the lift and ended up on the opposite side of the queue. Unfortunately for us, however, there was a considerable line of people waiting to catch this lift back to the top of the slope. Luckily, I spotted that this queue was only long on one side of the lift, and so we quickly skated around the back and rejoined it on the opposite side. We were on the lift in a matter of seconds, rather than the 15 or so minutes it would have taken on the first attempt. We got to the top a few minutes later and skied down a new run for us – Cloud 9. This run was the furthest run away from the lift, but still ended up at the base of the 7th Heaven Express.

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7th Heaven, due to its distance from the rest of the lifts on the mountain, closed earlier than most – at 2:30pm – and because we stopped, a number of times, to take photos, we were highly sceptical that we would get another ride up. We certainly had taken a fair while to get down, and it was 2:40pm before we reached the bottom of the lift – but it was our lucky day, and they were still loading people on to the lift. We jumped on the now non-existent line and got the nearly very-last ride up. Following our lucky break, we enjoyed our last last run down and the views which had multiplied in magnitude now that the sun was a few degrees lower on the horizon of peaks across the valley. It took us some time to get down because of this, and the lift was well and truly closed by the time we were done.

We followed the home trail, Sunset Boulevard, to the base of the Solar Coaster, and then the aptly-named ‘Gear Jammer’ to the base of the mountain. Ed got a little hot half-way down, and had to stop to unzip many parts of his jacket to ensure he didn’t overheat in the process. We reached the village transport loop at about 3:30pm, and were on the hotel shuttle just before 3:45 – nearly an hour after our last ride up at the top of the hill.

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Soon after we were back at the room, where Pip had prepared a dish of nachos – and in the process of, had to find her way to, and back from, the supermarket. Although Pip’s sense of direction doesn’t always do her favours, this time it had paid off. We enjoyed the snack immensely, and soon after headed to the pool area for some time in the hot tub. We didn’t spend too long floating about, and returned to the room to get ready for dinner. With only a few days remaining us here in Canada, we weren’t going to buck the trend and actually cook dinner again, now were we, and so we headed into the village to find something different to previous nights.

We ended up at La Bocca, a restaurant we had considered on previous occasions, but had not actually experienced in the time we had been here, or on any visits to Whistler in the past. Dinner was both nice and enjoyable, and we spent a bit of time here before heading to Cow’s – or Moo’s as it had become known since Kerrie had visited – for some dessert. We returned to the room soon after, and Skyped those back home before heading to bed. Everyone was considerably tired and in need of a good night’s sleep, so this is what we attempted to do.

As fast as time seems to have flown here, we can’t believe that it’s nearly coming to an end for us in Whistler. We’re trying to not let this get to us, however, and so are looking forward to tomorrow’s skiing as any other day, and are hoping that the weather will continue to improve (although today was not technically an improvement over yesterday).

Stay tuned for the latest news, adventures, and fun and games, and be sure to check out the latest photos in the gallery - while there aren’t quite as many as yesterday, and the views aren’t quite as nice in most cases, there are some brilliant panoramas to check out so make sure you do!

Looking forward to catching up with everyone soon – enjoy yourselves, but not too much!