December 17 – 24, 2006
Jerry and Will go to Whistler
Will flew home from college on the 16th and we drove up to Whistler the next day. We drove straight through on Canada 1 and it took 4 1/2 hours. We stayed at Deer Lodge in the Village North.
We skied three days on Whistler and three days on Blackcomb.
It snowed pretty much every day we were there. Generally we got five or six cm overnight, but one night before we skied Blackcomb we got 22 cm. We waited 45 minutes, but we were on the fifth chair on Glacier that day and got first tracks down Heavenly.
On Whistler, we had a lot of fun on the new Symphony lift which opened on the 16th. (Too bad they didn’t have all the electrical bugs ironed out when we were there.) We skied a lot off the Peak lift. We did one of the Harmony Horseshoes. We did Sun Bowl. We didn’t hike Flute and we didn’t ski any of the steep entrances into West Bowl.
On Blackcomb we skied a lot off of the Glacier lift including Secret Chute, Pakalolo, Cougar Face and Sudan Couloir. We did a lot of runs in Heavenly basin and in the trees next to it. We had a really good time in Everglades and on Riders Revenge. We didn’t ski the Blackcomb Glacier or hike Spanky’s Ladder.
The first day out I fell on the run just below the top of Symphony and broke a rib. (We were in a white-out at the top of a step short step and I couldn’t tell if I was moving when with no warning my feet just fell straight down from under me and I hit hard on my chest.) I skied pretty conservatively the rest of the time – looking for powder instead of bumps – and I had trouble bending over to buckle in (hence the photo below.)
I didn’t want a camera in my pocket because it hurt enought without a tight jacket so I made Will the photographer and he didn’t want to take pictures. So all that’s in the gallery are some shots of me in pain and some terrain shots from near the top of Symphony. (I got him back with a couple shots of his pile of ski clothes, though.)
We drove back on Christman Eve – straight through on Canada 1. It took 4 1/2 hours.