Whistler

Nelson asked me a couple of weeks ago if I was interested in going to Whistler to go skiing. I could not say yes fast enough! Unfortunately, I had to wait a few days to find out if I was free and then the trip was a go.

Nelson and Debbie's son Geoff was going up for the day with his school so we dropped him off at the school at 5:45am (I know, way too early for me!). Then the four of us, Nelson, Debbie, their daughter Cathie, and I, hit the road. It was dark almost the entire way but we arrived at the hill for a full day of skiing. I rented some equipment and hit the slopes. Unfortunately, it was raining at the bottom of the runs but we were told that it was snowing at the top. After a long ride up in the gondola, we reached the top of the musical runs with runs like Harmony, Symphony, and Adagio. There are a set of wooden pipes at the peak that make music when the wind blows.

My first run of the day was absolutely wonderful but it became more difficult as the cloud/fog layer at the top became thicker. It was very difficult to distinguish between the sky and the snow and it was also tough to get any depth perception on the hill. I could not see where the snow was thicker or looser so the skiing was very hard at the top. However, the middle level of the hills was just fine so we spent a lot of time skiing there. The upside to the questionable weather is that there were not a lot of skiers on the slopes and there were almost no lineups for the lifts.

After spending a couple of hours on the Whistler slopes, we took the Peak to Peak Gondola over to Blackcomb. Because of the fog and cloud mix, we were unable to see much from the gondola. We took some time to have lunch at the Glacier Creek chalet. By this time, my legs were quite sore and I spent a little longer in the chalet while Nelson, Debbie, and Cathie skiied another run. I met them about 20 minutes later and we hit the slopes again. At this point, I realized just how little of the hill I had skiied, in terms of vertical drop. We took a combination of lifts all the way to the top of the hill and skiied one of the longest runs all the way down into Whistler Village. Including stops along the way to take pictures, it took us the best part of an hour to ski down. Now we weren't exactly bombing along but it is amazing to be able to ski such a great distance without taking a lift.

It was now getting quite foggy again and it was raining at the bottom of the hill. The visibility was getting very low and my legs were done. You can see from the picture just how poor the visibility was.I decided that it was time to return my rental equipment and I spent a bit of time trying to dry off while the others went to find Geoff. They signed him out of his school trip and we spent some time wandering around the village. There is a lot of activity going on in the village right now as they construct the medal plaza and the CTV broadcast centre. We also looked in a few of the shops and even stopped to eat at a couple of old favourites!