Whistler long weekend
This past weekend my father, sister and I went up to Whistler for a long weekend full of skiing and Olympic watching. Dad and I left Seattle early on Friday afternoon, picked up Allison in Vancouver and after the required Timmy’s stop in Squamish we made it to Whistler in time to pick up our rentals and get a good night’s sleep before our first big day of skiing.
My downhill skiing history since high school can be summarized by one word: sparse. In grade 13 I almost separated my shoulder skiing during March Break. Then I took a long skiing hiatus (for one thing it was a banned activity when I played basketball at Waterloo) until 2002 when I skied two days at Whistler after visiting UBC. I was at Whistler this past Christmas but during that trip Matt and I snowboarded. So this past weekend was basically my second time on downhill skis in the past eight years.
My rentals were a pair of K2 “Lotta Luvs.” Allison has skied on these before and she informed me that in fact the skis didn’t need me – they could do all the work on their own and I just had to point them down the mountain. That was exactly the type of skis I wanted to be on!
On Saturday morning we were in the Whistler gondola line at 8:15am. It was a beautiful day for skiing. It was clear and sunny and the conditions were pretty good. There wasn’t any fresh snow but the base was well groomed. We had been warned that it was going to be quite cold but that turned out not the be the case. Allison and Dad did a good job of showing me around the mountain and keeping the pace slow enough that I could keep up. I am a much better skier than snowboarder (probably because I started skiing at age 13 and have only going snowboarding three times) so it was nice for me to actually get off the super easy runs!
I felt good skiing but I was beat on Saturday night. We went out for dinner in the village, then did a little shopping and I was in bed by 9pm!
On Sunday we decided to ski Blackcomb. At lunch we think we had a Ross Rebagliati (the 1998 Olympic gold medal snowboarder) sighting. Allison spotted him from across the dining hall. He is a Whistler resident so I think there’s a good chance it was actually him.
We decided to ski a half day on Monday. We went back to Blackcomb and were the first non-staff people up the lift that morning. I don’t remember how many runs we did but it was a lot. We also stopped a lot less and Dad just kept checking over his shoulder to see that I was keeping up. For our last run we went from the top of the 7th heaven chair all the way to Blackcomb base without stopping!
We were back in the condo just after 11:30am to watch the start of the gold medal game in women’s hockey between Canada and Sweden. We ran around, had showers, returned our rentals and finished packing during the first and second periods. Then we went down to Whistler Town Square where they had a jumbo TV set up showing the game. We found a table at a restaurant overlooking the square and settled down to watch the last period. Here are Allison and I ready to cheer on Team Canada.
Team Canada beat Team Sweden 4-1. I have to say that watching Team Canada win an Olympic Hockey gold medal outside on a clear winter day in a future Olympic city was a pretty special experience. After the game we hit the road for the long drive back to Vancouver/Seattle. It was a great weekend. There are more photos posted on my flickr account and an almost duplicate set up on Allison’s account.
