Last day on snow...

8th Mar, 2008

It was close to 10:30 before Clive and I dragged ourselves to the snow for the very last time for this trip. I have been suffering from a cold, keeping Diane up all night with my coughing and I guess it's caught up with me. We needed to have an early finish to pick up the hire car before 5pm so today was always going to be an easy end of trip ski.

We headed to Whistler and skied the runs off Franz's Chair, a chair which only opens on weekends and busy periods so hasn't been open since we arrived. We skied a few blues and a very friendly black run before giving the area away because the chair was very slow. A few pics from Franz's Meadows area....





We then headed to the dual T-Bars which run up Glacier Bowl, the area where The Saddle run comes down. Again, the T-Bars are only operational at peak times so it was our first trip on them. We skied down the T-Bar run and headed to the Peak Chair for the last time. A few pics of the T-Bar, with The Saddle in the background and some pics of the Peak Chair taken from Franz's Chair....







From the Peak Chair we headed to the Symphony Amphitheatre to ride the Harmony and Symphony Chairs. We skied a few runs we hadn't skied before and a few of our favourites that we had, but the lift lines were pretty ridiculous. Being a Saturday they were long, but we had not encountered any lines all week and none at Big White in our 10 days there, so our patience was tested having to encounter long lines and waits on our last afternoons skiing. I took some final shots of this great wide area before starting to head homewards. Note the long lift in the first shot. That is Harmony Chair and it is about a quarter of the way into the ride, after you ascend the first major hill. Mind you, it is not the longest lift, some have over 200 chairs on each lift, but it is the only lift that gives you an uninterrupted view over it's length....








We started to head back down the mountain where we passed 2 chairs with big, big lines. We skied further down the hill towards the Gondola mid-station where the beginners area is and looked to the left and saw the Garbanzo Express was empty!! We went over and skied straight onto the lift. Off the top we headed left down one of the easier black runs, Raven. Halfway down the run a fence stopped us going further as they were conducting gate training for the 2010 Olympic hopefuls!!! We had to branch off down another run and pick our way back to the bottom of the Garbanzo.

We did another few runs off the lift when we decided that we needed to wrap it up and return for the last time. Off down our favourite home run, Crabapple, returning to the Village in terrible sugary spring snow, yuk. Up the Blackcomb Gondola to mid station and slid back to the unit for the final time.....it was over.

We then went to Avis to pick up the car and were told we had a free upgrade to a Dodge Darango. It was a huge SUV and we managed to fit our luggage all in the back without Diane and Lorraine having to nurse any bags, as on the trip up. Dinner was at the Teppon Village in the Hilton at Whistler for some Japanese Tepenyaki. Very nice and very expensive.

I'll make one more entry from LA on Tuesday morning, so when you wake up on Wednesday you'll have the last blog.

Later....