Whistler

Short Version:
We see some sights. Great day. Disaster.

Long Version:
We spent two weeks in North Vancouver in the end, and were feeling suitably recharged by the time we hit the road north to the resort town of Whistler. The drive up the Sea-to-Sky Highway was beautiful; it runs north along the eastern side of the northern Georgia Strait, up the heart of the Coast Mountain range. There are a number of townships along the way, the biggest of which is the port town of Squamish, which the bilingual signage showed was originally known as Sḵwxwú7mesh* and which has an enormous granite hillock named the Stawamus Chief that looms impressively above town and highway.

Squamish featured heavily in our future plans, but today we stopped briefly for a trail map and ride advice, then carried on up the valley to Whistler, which was - very much unlike Vancouver - basking in glorious sunshine. There were a LOT of people around the township, and the two free public parking lots were near-full when we arrived early in the afternoon. We found a spot in the lower, gravelly one, secured the Reaper, and set off to see what we could see.

Crankworx Mountain Bike Festival runs for nine days, from Saturday to the following Sunday. Innumberable thousands of people visit during that time, some of whom were there specifically for the bike racing, jump and skill exhibitions, new bike demos, scantily-clad promo girls**, energy-drink giveaways***, more-or-less attractive members of both sexes, loud music, and sundry other festival shenanigans. Others were there just to see Whistler and its environs - chairlifts and gondolas run to the top of both of its mountains year-round, alternating fantastic skiing and snowy-mountain sight-seeing in winter with world-renowned downhill mountain-biking and relatively-unsnowy-mountain sight-seeing in summer. A number of this latter group of people looked somewhat bemused by the proliferation of armor-clad bike-wielders and their attendant hangers-on and commercial activities, but allowed themselves to be funnelled through to the gondola lifting them peakward with minimal fuss.

Under "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" rules of engagement, Janine and I had acquired media passes to the festival, and we spent some time searching for event HQ before collecting our Media Area Access tags and our 5-day all-access lift passes and heading uphill in a gondola. And then a chairlift. And then another chairlift. This took us to the tippy-top of Whistler Mountain, which gave us panoramic views on all sides, and was generally awesome. A short walk around the summit area, then back down the Peak Chair and onto the Peak To Peak Gondola, which is a relatively recent construction linking Whistler Mountain with its neighbor and partner in lift-company, Blackcomb. The gondolas on the Peak To Peak are larger than the ones running up Whistler Mountain, and we found ourselves sharing ours with couples from Idaho, Toronto, Alberta, and Vancouver. And with Pony, the Chinese bloke now resident in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, who we'd acquired initially on the way up Whistler and who stuck with us right through to the foot of Blackcomb. There were a bunch of people ahead of us in the Peak To Peak queue, but they were waiting the extra 20-25 minutes (as quoted by one of the almost-exclusively-Australian lift operators) for a glass-bottomed gondola, which would probably have been quite awesome for those with a waiting-enabled temperament. Even without the glass bottom, though, the journey was pretty cool - it's a LONG way down from the highest point.

Down Blackcomb - past a bunch of kids practicing ski-jumps into a pool - then a short walk back to Whistler Village, where the Air DH racing was reaching apogee. Younger sibling of the now-venerable downhill (DH) race, Air DH has more jumps but is still basically a race down the mountain. We saw the pros flying through, and were agog at some of the stuff they were riding - which we could see up-close-and-scarily-personal courtesy of the enormous television screen at the base of the run. There were NZers galore around the place, including a wheelchair racer, a couple of pro riders, and a couple of bike mechanics who'd come racing - Leigh, the bloke who succeeded in stopping the godawful vibration my back brakes were sending through the frame whenever they were touched, had come in 31st of 90+ riders in the Mens Open Division, and his partner Carrie had nabbed 2nd in the Womens Open, which is pretty blimmin excellent.

It had been a big day, with lots of excitement, so we wandered down to the demo zone and sounded out some of the folks there about borrowing bikes in a day or two (on the grounds that XC bikes up a chairlift = funny looks and/or certain death) then back to the Reaper and back to Vancouver, where we ate delicious foods and slept like hibernating bears until morning, which is when we realised our backpack was gone, and with it our camera, all our money, all Janine's ID (except her passport), and various other items. Which kind of put a dampener on our good moods.






* = Pronounced Squamish, I gather

** = They wore furry leg-warmers with their tiny hot-pants. This is a good look, and should be adopted much more widely. But not by wide people.

*** = By donation. I heard from one chap how his friend wanted one of the sugary caffeine monstrosities but had no money, and was making no headway convincing the scantily-clad promo girl (these ones were in skimpy camo gear) that he should be allowed one for free. Spying a penny**** on the ground, he picked it up and offered it up. Donation accepted, he toddled off, drink in hand, to rejoin the lift queue.

**** = That's one cent for all you southern hemispherans