The new Blackberry is out in Canada - I hear it's what all the cool kids are using
We hired an SUV for the 2 hour drive from YVR to Whistler, the drive is rediculously scenic, hard to capture on camera
First day out I went to the Glacier back bowl on Blackcomb.
I was in all day lessons most of the time -- we skied our buns off, average skiing of 20 miles per day.
Hard core Apres with our 5 year old!
Eating out every day got a bit expensive but was really fun - there are a lot of great restaurants in Whistler!
Day 3 was probably the most magical day of the trip -- My wife and I typically ski in seperate groups because we're at different levels but she commented that her group mostly stuck to the blue groomed runs and she kept seeing the same part of the mountain. We booked an all day private lesson with an amazing instructor, he had her skiing the Harmony and Symphony bowls on Whistler, Glacier on Blackcomb, and the Dave Murray olympic downhill. My wife skied really well on the bowls and black runs!
On Day 4 my wife and I did an intermediate/advanced group lesson together because we had so much fun together the day before. It was a good day for me to work on form. She did really well on blue and black runs. That's Evan, the instructor I worked with all week -- he's really great, if you're ever in Whistler I highly recommend him.
Day 5 we did another intermediate/advanced all day lesson Unfortunately around 10:30 she hit a bit of sticky snow and fell forward on a blue run. The end result was a broken collarbone. I'm really glad I got to ski with my wife the previous two days. This was her first sports injury ever, so she's feeling like it's upped her cool factor quite a bit.
Day 6 I did an advanced/expert lesson on powder skies doing mostly off piste skiing to prepare me for day 7...
Day 7 was something I had been preparing for for months and still need a few more years to properly prepare for. Heli-Skiing!
I was with a group of 10 people and two avalanche/saftey guides. They spent an hour going over helicopter saftey (apparently the helicopter sinks lower in the snow and the blades can scalp you even if you're wearing a helmet -- the description didn't sound like a party so we tried our best to avoid that...) Then we spent another hour going over avalanche saftey and training -- we all had to wear transponders that could be in either transmit or receive mode, we had to switch between the modes, do headcounts, and locate a buried transponder. We leanred to use the snow probes (basically telescoping tent poles that you use to pinpoint the buried person before you start shoveling). It was pretty intense.
I can't really describe the experience -- you lose all sense of distance and pictures just can't do it justice. The scenery is amazing but of course there are no markings anywhere. At the start of the day we were in huge wide open areas so all we had to worry about was avalanches -- The guides did a good job of spacing us so that we didn't put too much weight on areas they thought could start sliding.
The snow was unlike anything I've ever skied before.
It's not easy to get a table where we stopped for lunch, but the views were incredible and made it all worth it!
In my group there was me, a few other Americans, and five Germans. The Germans all started skiing before they were three years old and live two hours from the Alps. Needless to say I was seriously outgunned. I've got some video from the phtoographer and some from my GoPro but it will take me a while to compile it -- I'll add it once it's ready but don't hold your breath.
To ski on serious powder you need to have your skis flat and together so they float on the snow. As I started to get tired I reverted to a wider stance and a bit of edging since that's all I do in the SouthEast. I've got some pretty funny videos of what happens next...
Luckily this German lady from our group took me under her wing. I fell 3 or 4 times in really deep powder and she helped me up each time.
After lunch we did some tree runs. The guides are really good at staying calm in sticky situations. There was one point in a tree run where I had to go through a very steep drop in the middle of a tree run. I tried to chicken out and go left. The guide below me yelled out and very diplomatically told me that he liked the route I was avoiding better than the route I was taking. He got me to backtrack and go down the steep drop. It was only later that he told me that the route I was going led to a crevasse with a possibly 100 foot drop...
Day 8, some slight flight mixup left us stranded at DFW -- If you ever find yourself in that predicament, the Grand Hyatt right in terminal D is a great hotel...
According to SkiTracks, I skied 100,865 feet of vertical drop and 124 miles over the 7 days I spent skiing. After the "unofficial summit" I'll have 30 days on snow this year (22 at Beech, 7 at Whistler and 2 at SnowShoe). This is about the same as last year when we started this crazy journey. On this vacataion we asked pretty much everyone we me that lives at Whistler how much they ski and the average seems to be 70 - 100 for people that work at the hotels and restaurants, and around 120 - 130 for people that work on the mountain. It's a little humbling to realize that they ski more in a year as I've skied my entire life...
