We arrived into Whistler Creak Side at about 6pm. We had arrange to stay at one of Andrew’s mates places, but we were warned, “It is really small..”
He wasn’t wrong. The living / dining / kitchen was about 5m x 5m. Already 3 people living in this tiny place, we decided to move on in find of some other form of accommodation.
So the Olympics are over the town is apparently empty. Even though it seems to be teeming with tourists. Can’t imagine the carnage during the games when it was apparently busy… We made our way up to Whistler Village, where all the action was suppose to be happening. The 4 of us split up and started doing the rounds getting prices for hotel rooms.
In the end we somehow decided that the Hilton was the best option. Pretty good value for $260 a night between 4 people. Also considering that a week earlier the same room was going for over $600 a night. So it was a deal we couldn’t pass up.
1st day in Whistler: Lining up for a day pass I was wondering what to expect when we got to the upper mountain. It was really warm in the village, and we had been told by some of the locals that the snow was not bad, quite fun for a bit of jibbing and general cruising around. So I had my park skis with me, expecting nothing more than springie day skiing.
$97 later I was on the gondola, shaking my head… Once we got to the upper mountain and onto one of the top lifts we were greeted with cold temperatures, a fresh few inches of snow and perfect visibility. Confused on why we were told that the conditions were different to what we were seeing. We quickly discovered what was going on when our guide, one of Andrews mates takes us on down this ridge line, away from all the fresh open slopes into the trees and dropping so much elevation that the snow turns to a mix of crud and slush. We get on the lift confused once again, looking around towards the upper mountain and seeing fresh snow, steep faces, chutes and cliffs. Why had we just skied that ridge line? Why did we go so low?
We started pointing out little areas to our guide, “we should ski over there, and keep high.”These comments were followed by this remark. “You guys actually ski that stuff...? Hmm…” At this point we realized that at Whistler we were dealing with a totally different bread of skier than we were a custom too. Even though in Jackson there are about a 10th the amount of people skiing than on a normal day in Whistler, all the area that we could se in front of us would have been totally chewed up and tracked out by now.
We took advantage of this, I up graded my skis and spent the rest of the day ripping around both Whistler and Blackcomb, skiing almost all of the upper mountains.
A great day! This was cause for celebration. The beer was flowing and night life in Whistler did not disappoint. Partying into the early hours of the morning.
The next morning we were not feeling quite so sharp. But ready for a big day. Gearing our self’s up for some hikes and some good skiing. We definitely got a couple of strange looks on the way to the gondola, fully equipped with big mountain skis, back-packs and avalanche gear.
We headed up Whistler mountain in search of an area we had seen the day before called Flute Bowl. What we were told was a 40min hike. We found this hard to believe from our vantage point, looked more like 25mins…
Once at the bottom of the hike, we were not greeted with the normal ‘Boot pack’ that we normally saw in Jackson. Instead a nice groomed trail that never got too steep and winded its way to the top of the bowl. We could now see why it was going to take 40mins… Traveling about twice as many steps as necessary.
We got to the top, hangover still very present. Took a bit of a breather before heading down.Definitely the best snow we experienced on the trip. So well worth it.
That night we were pretty tired, but still had the energy to find our self’s a table at the Sushi Village, right in the centre of Whistler village. Not a cheep meal, but definitely the best food I’ve eaten this year!
The next morning we got up, made use of the Hilton’s pool and spa one last time before packing up and heading back down to Vancouver. Quite an amazing drive, from the highway you could see massive mountains and glaciers.
Once back in Vancouver we went back to our friend Joe’s places, got some drinks and prepared our self’s for a night on the town. Fun night was had. A few key differences between going out in Van vs Melbourne: The ratio of girls to guys – 1:5, The bars close at 3am and there are also an amazing amount of crazy people cursing around town talking to them self’s, yelling for no reason, or asking for money.
Saturday morning we got up with sore heads, packed the car and got back on the road. We got stuck crossing the boarder back into the US for about an hour which from what we have herd isn’t too bad. But still a pain in the ass. We drove East from Seattle this time and opted to go home through Montana rather than Oregon because the drive was so boring. We made it to Spokane which is on the East side of Washington, we found a cheep hotel room and settled in for the night.. The next day back on the road at about 9am. 10 hours later we were back in Jackson.
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