Canada 07/08 – Whistler – Day 3

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!

Canada 07/08 – Whistler – Day 2

Day 2 at Whistler started early – 7am to be precise. We figured that the cause of the nasty crowds yesterday was being out on the slopes too late, as we really hadn’t begun until 10:30/11:00am-ish. We readied ourselves and were down at the buffet breakfast by 8am – only to find that the breakfast, at least, was just as busy (if not worse) than the other morning. We eventually found a table and enjoyed endless supplies of food.

Following breakfast, we decided that after our poor day on Blackcomb the day before, that we were going to try out Whistler instead and see if we liked it any better. Skiing out the back door of the hotel, we were immediately on Blackcomb (just due to the location), so we were required to catch the Magic Chair up in order to have enough elevation to ski across to the Whistler base. We were surprised to find that there were no queues at 8:30am (the lifts opened at 8:30am).

Even across at the Whistler base, the queue for the gondola moved rapidly, and we were never left standing in one spot for more than a few seconds. Although the gondola ride itself wasn’t all that enjoyable (supposed to be a 10 person gondola, but we were crammed like sardines with only 8 people – everyone with skis and boards on board as well). After we finally reached the top, we were glad to discover that it wasn’t windy, and there still wasn’t a huge crowd about the place. The gondola ride had taken nearly as long as the entire flight from Kelowna to Vancouver a few days before – all of about 25 minutes.

We skied first down to the ‘Red Chair’, attempting to explore as much of the mountain as possible while the crowds were quiet and while the weather was still nice. We hadn’t skied Whistler in about 10 years, and so were very unfamiliar with the territory. From the Red Chair, we continued to make our way across the mountain skiing the Emerald, the Harmony and the Symphony areas. After taking Pip down a nice steep bowl, that we couldn’t really see how steep it was until we were right inside it, we decided that it was time for lunch.

Tess decided to make her way back down the entire mountain to the village at the bottom – ski somewhere in the midst of 11km long. She met up with Nat and they ate at one of the many restaurants across the village. Ed, Pip and I dined at the Roundhouse day lodge – at the top of the gondola, right near the top of the mountain. Although there looked to be over a 1000 pairs of skis out the front, we soon discovered that it was relatively quiet inside. We ate lunch, still trying to figure out where all the people could be – or who had left their entire collection of boutique skis out the front.

Lunch was enjoyable – and cheap – with Ed getting a combo meal of a burger, fries and a ‘large pop’ for only $9. After we had finished eating, we returned to the ‘Symphony Ampitheatre Area’ to continue exploring the mountain, and enjoying the nice snow we had found over there before lunch. We were quite impressed that the crowds had stayed quiet all day – and were still quiet now after lunch.

We skied here until this lift closed at 2pm, and then made our way back across the mountain, taking lift after lift as they closed. We ended up taking the ‘Peak Chair’ to the top of Whistler mountain, the highest point around for a fair way, and skiing the ‘Peak to Creek’ trail which took us from very top, to very bottom of the mountain. The crowds on the final run out to the village were a little worse than we had experienced all day, but this was to be expected with only a limited number of ways down. Once we reached the bottom we took the Blackcomb gondola to the top, and skied down to our accommodation.

We returned to Whistler Village for dinner again, this time venturing to yet another one of the many restaurants around, ‘Carumba!’, where everyone had another excellent meal. Dinner was followed by yet another spot of shopping, and then we all headed for the gondola home. On our way through the village, Nat and Tess thought they saw someone who looked remarkably like Patrick – after making a fuss about it, it soon turned out that it was Patrick. We had tried to contact him the past few days, but he had had Sunday and Monday off and had not got any messages at this stage. He was returning to teaching the day after, but we arranged to meet up following his day on the slopes.

After this spot of excitement, we took the Blackcomb gondola back to the midstation (which took forever, as the gondola was running at a crawl), and then walked back to our room. We all fell quickly into bed, after a long day skiing. We hoped that the crowds would stay away as they had today, and that the weather would hold out as it had been fantastic all day.

Canada 07/08 – Whistler – Day 1

Whistler on a Sunday sucks. Whew – now that that’s all done with, lets get back to business. I was originally going to write that ‘Whistler sucks’ but time has changed me.

The day started early for Ed and Tess, but a little lazy for Pip and I. We discovered that the hotel provided a free buffet breakfast (that’s the best we’ve come across so far!), and so helped ourselves to many servings there before donning the snow gear and hitting the slopes.

Ed and Tess went out first and did a few runs while we ate breakfast, and returned soon after with the lift tickets they had also gone to purchase for us. By the time we actually hit the slopes it was close on 11am – a pretty lazy start considering the other mornings we had had. The slopes were icy, the queues were absolutely shocking (but apparently, according to staff, quite alright!) and it was cold – bitterly cold.

Because our accommodation backed onto the Blackcomb mountainside, we decided to spend the day skiing Blackcomb. Whistler, as such, is actually two mountains – Whistler Mountain itself, and Blackcomb Mountain right beside it. The bases meet at the bottom, but you can ski completely separate mountains by taking a different lift from there. We took the Wizard Express Chair up first, which happened to stop half-way up just as we were commenting that the neighbouring gondola had stopped.

Tess had decided that she was too cold by the time we hit the slopes, and had already returned to the room to meet Nat. Ed, Pip and I tackled the slopes alone. When the lift finally got moving again (after numerous repeated comments from Ed about needing to replace the AA Batteries in the lift), it was a good 10 minutes later. By the time we finally reached the top of the lift, we had hoped that the queue on the next lift up had dissipated – unfortunately, we were not in luck… more long queues, just as we had experienced at the bottom. Ed was not impressed (and neither were we, compared to say Kicking Horse, or in fact, any other resort – but we just kept quiet).

We reached the top of the lift, and arrived at the Rendezvous Restaurant (the upper daylodge) area only to find that the wind was blowing an absolute gale (+40km/h), and this was coupled with -15C temperatures to provide a very disgusting environment. The snow was deadly icy, and only covered in a small layer of snow – this made life very hard when attempting to dodge inexperienced skiers who swarmed all across the runs. We really weren’t having a great day so far.

Although the conditions were poor, the thing we disliked the most were the queues. As such, we headed for the Crystal Ridge Chair – Ed had assured us that this chair was quiet, and that there were no lines attached. We arrived to find that this was, indeed, the case. We rode up here and skied down, rather enjoying the run (although mildly icy in parts). We skied most of the way down the mountain, and then caught a series of lifts back up, taking us nearly to the top of Blackcomb. From here, we skied right to the bottom and had lunch at the Blackcomb day lodge.

We were all pretty cold and fed up with the conditions as we ate lunch, and immediately following lunch Pip decided to call it a day, while Ed and I continued on for a short while. While Pip went back to the room via the Magic Chair, we ventured to the Catskinner Chair – an old triple chair that serviced some very nice terrain. From here the views were excellent, and the runs quite nice also – ignoring the ice and crowds (which weren’t so bad over here). After a run or two, it was closing time (2:30pm for some lifts, 3pm for the rest) and so we skied to the bottom and returned to the room.

We all ventured into the village of Whistler again for dinner, deciding to dine at the Mongolie Grill – a restuarant similar, yet far more classy (and clean), to the Ghengis Khan back home. Dinner was excellent, and enjoyed thoroughly by everyone – the vegetables mixed in with the food was a nice surprise for the body, which had been lacking in certain groups. Following dinner, Pip, Tess and I went to Cows – Canada’s ice cream store – and treated ourselves to dessert.

By the time we returned home, everyone was more than exhausted, and we broke our usual pattern of dinner, CSI, bed and skipped straight to the bed part. It had been a tiring day fighting the weather and the crowds, and everyone was hopeful that both would improve tomorrow… we weren’t so sure, as there were 750 people here with the Far West Ski Association (from the USA), and it was a public holiday in the US to boot. Only time would tell.

I am a day behind in writing this, but will get everything up to date before too long. Stay tuned!