The college bus wasnt gonna get there until "a couple hours til the lifts shut o'clock" so I went up in the truck for an early start. Spring conditions mean its frozen solid in the morning and slushy after lunch with the art being finding the "good" snow that's in between! Its not exactly bad though, there's ooodles of snow to play with!
Being a friday, it was veeeeery quiet on the slopes - When I was away from the main gondola, I didnt see a single person! It's pretty cool having a whole mountainside to yourself - although I did feel like I couldnt do anything too extreme (just in case I ended up lying in a heap) but I did get all over the place and do well over 20 runs by the time my legs couldnt take it any more.
This is the deserted Harmony Bowl...I was the only one in it! Crazy!
After a few warm up runs in the bowl, I headed over to to Whistler Peak for some steeper fun.
click here to see the Whistler Peak panorama that was too big to upload!
I like steep skiing, so while I was alone I figured it was a great time to try the steepest lines Whistler has to offer. First up were two off the peak - the entrances (gap between the rocks) were scary edge-off-cliff affairs with no room for error (Couloir left, Cirque right)
"Couloir" has a very narrow (1 metre) entrance which goes steeply down about 10m to meet the main run from the side. The people in front of me shuffled slowly down on their bums but it looked to me like they might fall off the cliff at any second (!!) so I just skied straight down it! Talk about exciting! I did that one twice and it didnt get any easier - but once onto the main piste it was really steep and really good snow - sooo much fun.
Here's the guy in front shuffling...
...and this shows him at the point I went straight down to! Woooooohaa!!
Next was "Cirque". Again, a difficult narrow entrance - this one was about 2m wide so just about enough to make some quick turns - in between the exposed rocks! LOL!
You can just see the entrance in the top left of the pic below....
Does it look steep? It was!
Third time luck was "West Cirque" and yes, the entrance was gnarly. This run was my favourite cos it was steep and had lots of big rocks to go round - and it was really big! In the photo below, the circle is round a person standing at the bottom....
The pic below is the view from the top - the entrance is the slight ledge on the right - the little bit of rock you can see is the top of a(nother) cliff - I dont mind admitting my legs were shaking when I did this one - fall to the right here and rest gently on the snow - fall to the left.... and die!
Certainly not a good one for a windy day!
....and the view straight down - the speck right in the middle is a skier
I think the stress of being terrified took a lot out of me cos after doing these (and an nice little one called "Lifties Leap") my legs were shot so I headed back down to the village. Six hours of fun fuuun fuuuuuuun!
We stayed at the Blackcomb Lodge. It's a nice place - although with six in each room it was a little crowded. We all piled into one room to eat (yes, each room has full cooking facilities and a dishwasher)
When I caught up with them, Terry (below with Noo) had just managed to dislocate his shoulder while swimming! (did I mention there was a pool?) Apparently it was an old injury. He went off to the medical centre and was back in no time - get better soon Terry!
Later on a load of us went to club called Moe Joe's (clever eh?) I really liked it, grungy but good DJ and good sounds - and the waitresses kept bringing us free beer samples! Sweet!!!
Saturday dawned darkly. It had been raining all night and much to our dissapointment, it had also been raining on the mountain all night. When we got to the top of the main gondola it was snowing so we headed off for a quick run to test the conditions - unfortunately, the snow only lasted a little way before we dropped into the rain - I thought that was bad - until we got onto the chairlift in the driving rain. Oh what fun! By the time we got to the top we were all soaked so we went into the lodge to get some plastic bibs to protect us a little more. And then we went back out for a couple hours in sub zero tempretures - what can I say? It was cold. Very cold.
It was better after lunch - the snow was actually ok and we had a good few runs before giving up for the day. But it was soooooo good to get into the hot tub when we got back (did I mention there was a hot tub?)
And then we went out for Thai food.
It was veeeeery good. Yummy!
I woke up this morning aching. I think it's the fat skis - they're heavier so are much harder on the legs - well that's my excuse at least! Earl called wanting to know if I was skiing....I couldnt bear to dissapoint the poor fella so I selflessly agreed to go!
It was actually sunny! We had a good day on the mountain - the rain didnt seem to have caused much effect to the snow so once the morning freeze had thawed a bit we found some pretty good snow. We did a couple Harmony runs then headed onto the back side to the "Sun Bowl" - not very steep but miles and miles of open rolling snow - way off the piste of course.
Earl at the top of the Sun Bowl
The snow was blown about so much overnight that in places it was like powder! We did about 4 runs I think includind at about 1pm my first rock drop - just an ickle one but a proper one. Steep rocks - a bit of air and a landing at 500mph - wicked!
Earl having a breather! When you look at this photo you can see just behind to the left of Earl his line - he jumped and didnt make the landing - it was loads of fun on this terrain.
And that was about it. We did about 3 runs off the peak after lunch and headed down through the slush. I have to say, it was a very good weekend and well worth the small cost.
Whistler. Recommended! :-)
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