I stole this cool little tool off of Eric's MySpace page and figured it'd be useful for keeping track of not only where I've been thus far, but also where I want to go in the future. The site is kinda crappy and slow with all the ads, but hey, its hard to complain when its being provided free of charge. I love GoogleMaps! I'll probably try to keep it updated regularly and include it at the top of all my travel posts from here on out. I haven't had a chance to get everything updated just yet, but its definitely off to a good start. Click the picture below to check out the details.
I have to admit I was a little skeptical prior to committing to this trip. I mean, was it really worth it to fly all the way to Canada, just for snowboarding? I've seen my fair share of snow and while there are certainly good and bad ski resorts, I wasn't quite sold that there was something out there that could be that much better than Tahoe or Mammoth; both of which we regularly visit. Boy was I wrong.
In every logical metric I can think of to compare ski resorts, Whistler tops every place I've ever been to, hands down - its not even a contest in some areas!
- Size. This place is huuuuuuge. With over 8,000 acres of skiable terrain, we only managed to cover about 30% of the trails in our 2.5 days of boarding. The vertical on the mountain is over 5,000ft (nearly one vertical mile) and it can take a good 35-45 minutes to get down from the very top to the bottom. Of course, it also takes about that amount of time to get up there!
- Check out the trail map here. The map is actually so large, there's multiple "insets" for certain sections of the mountain which hold expanded views of the actual area.
- Click the size comparison on the trail map page and you'll see that this mountain is more than twice the size of Mammoth. Refreakin-diculous.
- Conditions. This obviously varies depending on the ever-changing weather conditions, but this particular trip was sweet because it never stopped snowing. I usually prefer sunshine and blue skies, though I'll make an exception in this case because constant snow = constant fresh powder = fresh runs every day. I love making the first marks in a big bowl of powder! Add a huge 10-feet base and it all comes together to make for an amazing boarding experience.
Knee-deep powder every day and fresh tracks? Yes, please.
- The village. Unlike Mammoth and Tahoe, everything in Whistler is somewhat centralized. There's a huge Village right smack in the middle that houses a ton of restaurants, shops, supermarkets, clubs, bars, and liquor stores. This is great when you don't have a car because so long as you live nearby, walking always is an option..... though you do have to be careful about random patches of ice. There's actually a lot of stuff to do here after hours! That is, if you aren't old and sleepy every day after a long day on the slopes hehe.
Eating at the Brew Co in the village. It seems like everyone's got their own nowadays... the beer sure was fannntastic though. This is also where I earned the name 'monster' haha. I'm a growing kid dammit!
"Its so cute." - Nessa
"Its magical." - Julie
Ummm.... maybe I wouldn't use the words, but the village was pretty sweet.
- The variety of terrain. There's a little something for everyone here, with a nice mix of terrain parks and trails for beginner, intermediate, and expert boarders. They also had a large variety of back country-type trails that went through trees and big, open bowls of powder. In my opinion, its stuff like that like that really puts Whistler over the top. After making a few runs through those parts of the resort, the 'regular' old trails seem boring by comparison!
Pure powder in the back country bowls. It was knee-deep in most parts because these runs aren't groomed back here so you just gotta keep going. Stopping usually meant sinking in and getting stuck ahahaha. These photos don't do it justice, but I was a bonehead on the last day and decided that bringing my camera for "just a half-day" wouldn't be worth it. D'oh. It was as close to heli-skiing you're going to get without a freakin' helicopter! Awesome.
- A handful of pictures of us running amock the trees. This would be so much easier on skis, but oh well, we still had fun on our boards. Its always good, unless you do something stupid like run into a tree... or someone else for that matter.
- Which brings us to everyone else's favorite pic, which I've tentatively titled Man vs. Wild. This is what happens when you start getting cocky towards the end of the day, feeling good about your newfound skills and complacency settles in. Then you do something stupid like follow someone who is far better than you and think you can squeeze through the same tight turn amongst the trees and - what else - wrap yourself around one of them. Actually the bottom of the board saved me from doing just that, but I ended up in a weird position with my board stuck in a vertical position about 8" deep into the powder at the base of the tree. Good thing for helmets.
- I'll wrap this up with a few group shots on the mountain. This little stick-figure snow sculpture is officially Vancouver/Whistler's 2010 Olympic mascot dude, though I have no idea why. We kinda blocked the 2010, but you get the idea.
That about wraps it up for Whistler. It was a somewhat hectic 3 days of boarding, but I think it worked out perfectly! Many thanks to Julie for getting everything together and organizing all the logistics even though we were all being the typical PITA.... planning is a b*tch! It was definitely good meeting all you new people, and for sure, we have to get together again next and make this an annual thing.
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