A Whistler Season in Numbers & Photos

*Geeky post alert* I like a good stat, but working in a no brain required job for 6 months hasn’t given me the chance to do any ‘number crunching’.

I really should be packing or doing something useful with my time, as we leave tomorrow (eeekkk)… but here are some stats from our season at Whistler Blackcomb:

Number of days up the mountain – 65 (63 snowboarding 2 skiing)

Distance boarded – 570 miles

Number of marked runs completed – 60 ish

Fastest speed – 41.4mph (13mph on skis)

Vertical Drop – 338,621 feet

Days worked – 113

Number of people validated – 50,000

Value of amount of tickets sold – At least $500,000 (i.e a pittance of what I’ve earnt – about $3,500!)

Highest amount sold in one day – $24,000

Amount spent on food at Whistler Blackcomb stores – $510 – Kyle spent £190

Times staff discount used – 125

Amount of Kokanee drunk – Undisclosed

Number of photos taken – A sh*tload

Views of my blog – 4,500 – Thank you for reading 🙂 I’m always surprised when more people than my mum read my blogs!

It’s so difficult to pick just a few photos which sums up our season, but here goes…

Bluebird Days, Outings to Vancouver & The Final Countdown

This time next week we will be jobless, homeless and no longer living in the Whistler bubble. We’ll be in Vancouver for a couple of nights before going to Vancouver Island then heading down the West Coast. Spring has arrived in Whistler and we’re loving the weather! The last few weeks in Whistler have been great, we’ve had a bit more snow, some awesome bluebird days and we’ve made a couple of trips to Vancouver for football and hockey games.

Going back a few weeks we had 35cm of snow overnight when the forecast only predicted about 5cm – always  nice surprise  Luckily we had already planned to get out early (6am!) for our last Fresh Tracks Breakfast of the season. Pow and a bluebird – what a day that was!

4 Weeks to Go…

I can’t believe we’ve only got a month left to go in Whistler (it’s also been over a month since I last posted – soz avid readers!) Time has gone so quickly, it feels only months ago that we were counting down the weeks to flying out to Canada. It’s going to be tough to leave, but it helps that we’ve got some pretty exciting travel plans in place!

Since I last wrote our travel plans for Whistler have changed a little, we are no longer planning on going to Australia and Asia as it’s too expensive to fly there from South America and Whistler is killing our bank balance. We are still planning on doing our trip round America which we’ve pretty much got sorted now – woohoo. We will be leaving Whistler on the 22nd April to go to Vancouver Island. From there we will be heading down to Seattle -> San Fran -> San Diego -> LA -> Vegas Baby -> Gran Canyon -> Salt Lake City – > Yellowstone -> Cody – > Denver – > New York -> Washington -> Chicago then finally to Miami before heading to Brazil. I’m tired just reading that list, we’ll be driving over 4,000 miles in just over a month! Then after Brazil for the World Cup, we will be going to go to a few other countries in South America, starting with Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. Money will determine where we go next/when we book those dreaded one-way tickets back to the UK.

Okay, back to Whistler… these last few weeks have been great. The snow has continued to fall through March and we’ve had some epic powder days:

 

Snow Much Fun

The snow is back!!! I had faith it would return and it’s back with a vengeance. Whistler was having the worst season in about 20 years, even the BBC pointed out last week that some Scottish resorts have more snow than here in Whistler… but not anymore! In the last 7 days we’ve had over 140cm of snow fall and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.

Like the last time we had a lot of snow, my days off fell at the perfect time. For my first day off we had about 15cm of pow then the second we had 35cm! Like everyone else I got up for the first lift at 8.15 so there were big queues which weren’t moving due to waiting on avalanche clearance. Well worth the wait though, even the main groomed runs still had great snow on them and we found good stashes of powder. I had so much fun going down some of the bowls and tree runs. Boarding from 8.30-3 both days killed me off – definitely the most tired I’ve been. The snow hasn’t stopped since then and I now have two days off again to enjoy even better powder!

3 Months into Whistler Life

Can’t believe it’s been 3 months since we left our jobs, flat and life in the UK to fly out to Vancouver for the winter season. Time is flying by and I can’t even remember what back home was like (exaggerating now, it hasn’t been that long). It only feels like weeks ago we were last minute planning everything and writing a blog ‘3 Months to Go’. Whistler life seems very normal to me now – waking up at ridiculous a.m on both work days and snowboarding days, drinking Kokanee, a Canadian beer and tedious work. I found out this week that I’ve already scanned over 12,000 people this season whilst validating and I’ve probably said ‘Hey, how you doing?’ (in a non-Joey way, people just don’t understand ‘you alright?! so that’s easier) to almost all of them…. that’s a lot of people!

So what’s new?! We still haven’t had snow for two and a half weeks, since my last post when we had 70cm in a couple of days. We are due a whole 8cm in the next few days, which we usually wouldn’t get excited about but every little bit of snow helps at the minute. It’s been sooo hot this week, it was 13 degrees at the top of the mountain a couple of days ago. Literally like spring skiing, not that I’ve ever skied in spring, but that’s how I assume it will be! Enjoyed not having having to wear 10 layers whilst boarding and having a beer outside at the top of the mountain, but I will be relieved when it cools down again and we get some much needed snow. A few recent pics:

Snow Gods, Fresh Powder & Whistler Fame…

The snow (proper snow) has finally arrived in Whistler. After a slow start to the season for snowfall, the last week saw over 90cm of snow fall! We were forecasted to receive 20cm on Friday night, which for the season we are having would have been great, instead we got 49 whole cm’s overnight with the snow still falling heavily on throughout Saturday. Luckily I had the weekend off, which is a rare occasion in Whistler as weekends are the busiest time for my work, to do a Women’s Snowboard Camp here.

I was like a very excitable 5 year old at Christmas to go out and play in the fresh powder (for once!). Even better that I was on a 2 day training camp so it was the perfect opportunity to learn how to snowboard in proper snow :-). The Arc’teryx womens camp was good fun and think I’ve finally managed to get there with snowboarding! The good snow conditions made it much easier for me to turn down a lot steeper runs than I have been doing. I did my first tree run, first black run and we even hit the park at the end of the day on Sunday… haven’t quite mastered jumping yet! Although I did get the tiniest bit of air on a ‘jump’ yesterday and I didn’t fall – that’s progress right there 🙂

Good day to have lift line priority!

Fresh pow in the trees

McDonalds Reunited in Canada For Christmas!

What a week this has been! My mum and dad came over from Bradford and brother from Saskatoon for Christmas. I’ve just had to say another emotional goodbye, but we’ve had such an amazing week in Whistler and few days in Vancouver!

So my mum and dad flew over on Friday, after a hectic day at work I met them at their nice little apartment in Whistler village (courtesy of airbnb – highly recommended!). Straight to the pub for a beer we went, in true McDonald / Whistler fashion!

Luckily we ha a bit of snow the night before they came so Whistler was all pretty and snowy again! I had quite a few shifts at work, so tried to fit showing them around and doing touristy things between that. We went to lost lake and Alta lake which looked very different to how they did a few months ago, with all the snow on top of the now frozen water. Cue pictures…

2 Extreme Sports in Less Than 24 Hours

Hi, my name is Laura and I’m an adrenaline junkie. I’ve been clean for 0 days now…

Okay so it turns out I’m a sucker for the thrill of extreme sports. Yesterday we did the bobsleigh here in Whistler, then not even 24 hours later I’ve just done the skeleton ride too!

Whistler is one of just three places in the world where the public can access the same track that olympic athletes use for the skeleton, bobsleigh and luge AND it’s the fastest & steepest track in the world AND it’s the exact same one that was used in the 2010 Winter Olympics! So yesterday, thanks to a cheap locals offer ending soon, we tried out the bobsleigh.

Cool Runnings has obviously put the sport on the map so to be able to do it in real life is pretty surreal. I was so excited to do it… then we got there and drove up to the start which was when I realised just how steep and long the track was. The nerves obviously kicked in, the driver came over and made some standard jokes about it being his first time driving then we were all set to go. As the smallest I sat in the second seat behind the driver, then Kyle and our friend Gary just behind him. Helmets on, we were good to go…. feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up it’s bobsled time (we forgot to bring a lucky egg). The first few seconds felt quite timid, then all of a sudden we turned round a corner and picked up pretty fast speeds! The turns on the corners were insane, it’s exactly like you see on the tv with helmets banging everywhere. It was impossible to try see what was happening as as soon as you turned your head to look it would be jolted back the other way. We hit speeds of 126km/h so yup pretty fast!

Our First Hockey Game, Settling into Whistler Life & It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Hello! It’s been a busy few weeks in Whistler. We’re now just over 5 weeks into Whistler life but it feels like we’ve been here so much longer. Time goes so quick here.

Last week we went to our first hockey game, woo! Although it wasn’t to see the Vancouver Canucks (the team we’ve been following since we got here), but the Vancouver Giants, who are in the league below the National Hockey League here. As part of one of the perks of working for the Whistler Blackcomb mountain you can join Club Shred which gives you discounted tickets. So for $20 we got transport to Vancouver, tickets to the game and a $10 food voucher… which was an absolute bargain! We were three rows from the front at the side so had a great view, although it seemed to close a few time when the players barged against the glass I really thought it was going to smash right in front of us!

It was obviously very different to football (sorry, soccer) back home and our beloved Bradford City, but it certainly didn’t disappoint. Within the first few minutes there was a big punch up between two players, seemingly over nothing, but that’s the whole point of the sport! It was just a little hard to keep up with and I lost where the puck was quite a lot. The Giants won 3-2 after scoring a late goal. We will definitely be going again, it’s probably the best $20 we’ve spent since arriving in Whistler. But will still be venturing to watch the Canucks at some point too, once we have a few more spare pennies  cents.

We had to buy some merchandise!

Don’t usually see signs like this at city!

Pretty close (just before a fight!)

Opening Weekend At Whistler Blackcomb 2013

Whistler Blackcomb opened for the season on Saturday, two weeks earlier than expected. Luckily I wasn’t scheduled to work on Saturday so I could go snowboarding for the first time in two years woo (Kyle wasn’t so lucky and had to work). So exciting to hear opening was sooner than we had all expected, although I wasn’t quite as keen to get up there as the people who had queued 24 hours to make sure they were first up the mountain.

I wasn’t expecting too much of the conditions as had heard it was pretty icy and not that much snow up at the top, plus only a couple of lifts and runs were open…how wrong I was! There was quite a bit of snow overnight and the sun was shining, what could be better than powder and a bluebird day for the opening day of the season?!

The conditions were great… my snowboarding not so good! After two years of not getting on a board and only having done a week anyway it was safe to say I was a little rusty. Nevertheless it was so good to be on the mountain, despite all the falls and many bruises! Roll on the rest of the season 🙂

I had to work on Sunday and had my first shift as a Ticket Validator at Creekside Gondola (where most of the locals live) so no snowboarding for me. A pretty easy job and it was quiet for most of the day, apart from a few keen people queuing from 7.30 to hit the pow. It snowed pretty much the whole day so was pretty jealous of all the people I was letting up the mountain, better get used to it I guess!