The last day on Blackcomb

Blackcomb is the other mountain at Whistler. A friend of a friend (of a friend) managed to get half price lift tickets so we went to grab one last day before the mountain shuts for the summer.
The possie for the day was Kiyoka, her boyfriend Trung and his mate Vince. We met Tu (who got us the tickets) at Whistler with her friend Daniel.

It was hot. Damn hot.















I hadnt been to Blackcomb glacier before, it involves a gondola, two chair lifts, a t-bar and then a ten minute hike up over the ridge - hard work at almost 8000ft but worth it. The glacier is in a huge bowl - and it's full of powder baby! It was all chopped up when we were there, but no groomed piste, no moguls and no piste markers - just miles and miles of fluffy white stuff. Good times.

click here to see the glacier - technical difficulties prevented me from uploading it :-(

Despite the lack of new snow, I did manage to find some untouched powder on a remote corner of the glacier ;-) I can't wait for December to get back up there!

Quite a lot of people at the lodge, but very few on the slopes








The day was not without incident though. After our free lunch courtesy of Telus (who sponsor the festival) we set off to take Tu and Daniel up to the glacier. Unfortunately Tu's snowboarding wasnt quite up to the T-bar lift so we split up - Trung and Vince took Tu down and Kiyo, Daniel and I hit the glacier - the next problem was when we lost Daniel on the glacier - there's only one very narrow way out so we agreed to meet him there but he didnt show! I think he must have beaten us there - quite possible cos of the powder hunting we were doing but we waiting 40 mins before giving up and heading down....

The view down the glacier
















We were waiting at the lodge when Vince turned up - bleeding - he'd been hit by another boarder and sliced his leg open. The medics patched him up a bit but took him down to the medical centre to get some stitches. Kiyoka went with them which just left Trung and I to get one last run on our way to pick up Vince. A couple hours later and we were on our way home.
It was nice to make the drive in daylight for a change. We even found time to stop at Shannon Falls - 1000ft high cliff with water falling off it! Look, I actually made it into a photo - can you see the sunburn/panda eyes?





















Obligatory group photo....




















Canada's such an ugly place ;-)















It was just getting dark as we got back to the city, an average Canadian sunset on the way....

And to finish up we had Tapas - mmmmm nice.

Well, back to study tomorrow - just two more exams to go!
Later dudes......