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…

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…

Whistler v Banff – The Pros and Cons (without going to either!)

One thing we knew for sure when we decided to take a career beak and move to Canada was that we wanted to go to a ski resort and find work there. While there is a lot of choice for what are meant to be amazing ski resorts in Canada (Banff, Fernie, Jasper, Lake Louise, Tremblant, Whistler, Great White) we quite quickly narrowed it down to Whistler and Banff.

We changed our minds a dozen of times. First I was 100% set on Whistler, while Kyle wanted to go to Banff, then we both changed our minds until we both decided back on Whistler! Here is how we came to our decision (a lot of internet research & speaking to people who’d been to both):

Whistler Blackcomb

Pros

– The biggest ski resort in North America

– Incredible scenery and mountains

– Ski in , ski out

– Huge choice of terrain

– Plenty to explore in a season

Cons

– The biggest ski resort in North America (maybe it’s too big for some people)

– More expensive

– Wages are low in ski resort

 

The Story So Far

Hello! Welcome to Our North America Travel Adventure 🙂

First off we is me (Laura) and my fiance Kyle who are soon to be moving to Canada for an adventure that is new to us both.

We have always enjoyed a holiday or two and going to new places, but we’ve always craved going away for a little longer. The backpacking travelling thing had never really appealed to us and there are different places that appeal to us both, so planning a trip would be a bit of a nightmare! So, we quickly scraped the idea of travelling. We had always talked about doing a ski season, but neither of us really wanted to do one in Europe and be a chalet couple and work stupidly long hours. So, what was the other alternative? You guessed it…. Canada!

We’d talked about doing a ski season in Canada a long time ago, but decided against it with Kyle being in a stable job and me deciding I wanted to get a grown up job straight after uni. However, an offer of a career break for Kyle and me thinking why the hell not – we decided to go for it!