Last weekend we took our first trip in our new car to Whistler!
In my mind, Whistler seems really far away (probably the concept of driving to a ski hill is very strongly associated with the 5-6 hour drive to Ruapehu), but in actual fact, it's only an hour and a half out of Vancouver. The road is two or three lanes in each direction the entire way (apparently single-lane state highways are very much a New Zealand thing, and although it winds along the side of a cliff for half the distance it's effortless to drive!
We were booked at the Adara Hotel in Whistler Village, the only hotel we could find for under $300/night. We later discovered that the outrageous pricing was due to that particular weekend being the Family Day holiday in BC. Katie had previously found out that parking at the hotel was going to be $25/night, so we drove around the village for a while looking for more parking. Everything we could find was either 12 hours max or ages away and still $20/day. Back to the hotel!
Unfortunately, we couldn't check in until 4pm, so we unpacked all our ski gear and got changed in the car, then left our bags in their storage room and headed up the mountain!
The weather for our entire trip was terrific. Total bluebird the whole time! Unfortunately no new snow, but once the sun had been on the slopes for a few hours, everything was good to ski. Sometimes there'd be a few icy patches in the shadows, but for the most part, it was epic.
We caught up with an ex-workmate of mine, Simon, who has been living in Whistler for the past month or so. He's living just outside the village in a house with a young family and their five-year-old kid, which sounds like a strange situation, but massively beats living in a 3 bedroom house with 16 other people like most of the rest of Whistler's working population. He snowboards all day, and in the evenings he drives a truck around picking up laundry from hotels.
Simon and I spent the next day skiing/boarding as much of the mountain as we could. The scenery is truly incredible, so no matter the condition of the runs it was still mind-blowingly awesome.
That afternoon, Katie and I went and found a frozen lake! Walking on a frozen lake was a very surreal experience. The whole place is decked out for summer; there are little jetties everywhere, all the houses have boats and kayaks in their backyards, there are parks and picnic tables everywhere, diving platforms out in the lake. But it's frozen! We were a little hesitant to step out onto the surface at first, but quickly overcame our fear and went for a slide around.
I was particularly taken by this mooring buoy, just sitting on top of the ice. Maybe for tieing your Ski-Doo up to?
You can find some more photos from Whistler here: https://adobe.ly/2FagWhq
And here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/yvHskeO6SKjJMXzF3