We awoke to another perfect morning and straight after breakfast the 4 of us headed out. A short ski down from our unit to the Wizard Express where the girls bought their day tickets and we were off.
From the top of the Wizard we had to pick our way back down Blackcomb and head towards Whistler Mountain. This part of the trip was particularly icey and the girls were less than impressed. In truth it was very similar to many of my runs at Charlottes first thing in the morning, very crisp and very fast. Eventually we made our way back down to Whistler Village and boarded the Gondola for the long ride up Whistler Mountain.
The difference in snow quality high up the mountain was enormous and the snow was great. The rest of the morning was spent doing laps of Ego Bowl and Upper and Lower Whiskey Jack runs. Nice wide winding green runs which all bring you back to the Emerald Express Chair. The girls were really starting to find their legs so I took this video of them skiing the bottom 1/3 of Ego Bowl. They took off together, but Lorraine had gained inspiration from watching the World Cup skiing on TV and took off down the run, you need to keep an eye on her jacket as she gets further and further out of camera shot....
I then took some pictures of Blackcomb and the 7th Heaven area from the top of the Emerald Express. These pics were looking over towards the area at Blackcomb from where I took the pics of Whistler yesterday....
....note the small hut at the top of the 7th Heaven Chair in the last photo. That is the Horstman Hut where Clive and I had lunch yesterday. The Horstman and Blackcomb Glaciers are on the other side of the ridge in that photo.
We headed in for lunch at 12:30. After lunch we split up, the girls did a few more runs until mid afternoon before downloading on the Gondola and having a hot chocolate in the village. They caught the bus back to the unit and awaited our return.
Clive and I headed towards the huge bowls on the north side of Whistler Mountain, a very long lift ride on the Harmony Chair takes you to the top of the Harmony Bowl....
These 2 areas are huge !!! The Symphony Chair was only built for last season and accesses the Flute Bowl, an area that was previously only accessable by hiking. The Flute Bowl has a real interesting bottom 1/3rd. A big sign indicates that the area is a summer habitat for bear and deer, so rather than cut down layers of trees to make a run, they have just taken a tree here and a tree there (5% according to the sign) and made gladed runs between the trees. There is a number of different entries to the Glades and you can cut across from one run to another. Real fun, safe tree skiing.
This is the top of the Symphony Chair....
....and some random views from the top and down in the bowls....
We caught the last lift on the Symphony Chair, so skied a great blue run, Harmony Ridge, back down to the Harmony Chair. As the name would suggest, this run follows the ridge line between the 2 bowls before descending steeply down the mountain to the bottom of the Harmony Chair. We caught the Harmony Chair back up and were advised that it was also last lift ride. A scoot down a nice little trail bought us back to where we had lunch.
We skied down a nice blue run until we hit the bottom of the Big Red Express which was still open. We hadn't finished yet so back up we went and came down a different run. When we reached the bottom the clock ticked over from 3:59 to 4:00. We just made it back on the lift for last ride on our 3rd lift in a row.
We headed back down a different way again and found the road that would lead us back to the village. Halfway down the road we noticed a few of the instructors and better skiers heading off down a different direction on a run call Crabapple. We guessed they couldn't be going anywhere else but the village so we took off behind them. What a decision!! Just about the best run of the day, the snow was lovely and the run fantastic. The run changed names a couple of times as we peeled off in different directions following the instructors, but we finally arrived at the village after a spectacular journey down. It will be our preferred way down the mountain on our remaining 3 days. A short Gondola ride to Base Lodge 2 and a short ski back to our unit saw us end a fantastic day and a very full on afternoon.
The 4 of us headed to the spa, but it was very crowded so we jumped in the heated pool. Very nice. Finally the spa emptied out so we jumped from the pool into the spa until about 6pm when we retired to the unit for dinner and drinks. We had a nice dinner and a bottle of icewine, a Canadian desert wine. At $60 for a 375ml bottle it worked out at $15 a glass (which was only half-full). Sorry, but it is overpriced, I've had equally nice 'stickies' in Australia for a 1/4 of the price.
That's all for now, enjoy....
1 comment:
Sounds like a great day, the photos are amazing. I could just jump in and go for it.
Like I said yesterday, Bob, you won't want to go back to Charlottes.
The girls skiing has really improved from the videos.
Lorraine is really pointing down the hill and appears to be getting up some real speed.
Diane is skiing nicely, it as been a long time Di since I saw you on skis, you are going great, amazing what a couple of weeks on the trot does for your confidence and skiing.
Enjoy your last few days
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