Jay and I made a trip back to Whistler a couple weekends ago. The first trip up there was in the winter of 2006-07. He arrived around lunch time on Thursday, Feb 3 and we made quick work of the trip up north with a brief stop for lunch at Five Guys Burgers.
We skied Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Each day was unique and had it’s ups and downs weather wise. Friday morning started off very windy with most of the upper mountain closed, but the afternoon saw some clearing and it was warm enough to give decent conditions. Our favorite run of the day was Arthur’s Choice on Blackcomb through the trees. Saturday had a lot more blue ski, but it came with colder temps and harder snowpack. The run of the day was the Blackcomb Glacier which had been closed for a while. We hiked back there and go a very long run through 4-6” of fresh snow. Later in the day we had a lot of fun in Symphony. Sunday got colder and windier culminating in a complete grayout at the top of Harmony. We were skiing by brail until we got down behind the ridge, but the snow was so good there that we braved the peak over and over again to make runs in Harmony.
Dinners were at Black’s Pub, Whistler Brewing Company, and Splitz Grill. Black’s and Splitz were first time visits and both were good. Splitz was an awesome find thanks to some tips from people at work. You build your own burger and there are some incredible toppings. I had a bison burger with babba ghanoush, hot sauce, and a few other things that were erased by delicious Sleeman’s Honey Brown.
Tim, Chelsea and Tyla came up on Saturday night and were with us for the Splitz experience. After burgers, we spent the rest of the night at my favorite Whistler bar: the Dubh Linn Gate Irish Pub.
All in all it was another fantastic trip. We carried the little Kodak Zx3 camera with us every day. It’s always tough to know how much video to stop and take. After you get home, you wish you’d taken more, but while you’re on the mountain, it feels like a waste of time when you could be skiing more. I think we found a good balance. I edited the video together. There’s nothing super special in it, but it will be a good memory of our trip. The video is embedded below or you can watch it on YouTube. The four most recent pictures in this gallery are also from this trip.
I didn’t put titles up telling you which shots are of Jay and which ones are of me, but here are some tips: I have a white goggle band and Jay has black. I have blue skies and Jay has black/orange. My coat is red and Jays is brownish maroonish orange. You can see a lot of daylight through my legs when I ski and Jay’s are usually pretty tight together. In general, if it looks like a good skier, it’s probably Jay. Also, we generally picked steep hills to shoot video and it’s incredible how poorly that translates to video!