Zipping over Whistler

holly — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:53:10 +0000

Get this: I work in travel. I’m all about travel. I live and breathe tourist destinations. And never once in my 26 years had I visited Whistler/Blackcomb, the world-class tourist destination that’s only two hours away up the Sea to Sky highway.

Oops.

What can I say, I put all my energy into far-flung locales, and completely overlooked what was right under my nose in the process. I’d been to the nearby town of Pemberton once in grade six for a school trip, but that doesn’t really count. But this past April I finally made up for all the years of neglect and the BF and I took a long weekend mini-break up to the soon-to-host-the-Olympics village.

The drive up alone was spectacular, the panoramas compelling me to take lots of pictures (that I got home and was like, “oh, look, another picture of a mountain with some snow on it”). There’s a good reason why the British Columbia tourism slogan is ”the best place on Earth” (and I’m not biased at all, of course). The highway itself is interesting, two lanes most of the way. They’re working on that prior to the Olympics, and there’s lots of construction where they’re widening it, but there will always be some bottlenecks where they can’t go more than two lanes due to the giant rock face on one side and sheer cliff drop into water on the other. This highway is actually the main reason why I hadn’t visited Whistler earlier, as most of my immediate family was not comfortable driving it (the “highway of death” nickname wasn’t helping things any), but I found it smooth, scenic and effortless. Granted, I was free to gawk at the scenery while Eric (who’s only lived here a year and had already been to Whistler multiple times) could focus on the road without being distracted, so that helped.

We went in April because I don’t ski (the one time I went cross-country I sprained my ankle and had to be evacuated on the back of a ski-doo), and more importantly, I don’t do cold. I live in Vancouver, people! If it drops below zero schools close, and it takes far less than that for my sensitive hands to turn “oh my God, are you okay?” white. Turns out that by total fluke we hit the final weekend of the Telus World Ski and Snowboard festival, so the place was packed and free concerts/free promo stuff from the suppliers’ booths/free extreme sports demos/free-wheeling drunk Australians hanging naked out of their hotel rooms at 10am. I’m not sure if that last part had anything to do with the festival, but when I go back I’ll compare and let you know.

The village itself is adorable, in that perfect, Disney-does-a-ski-village way (I know, I compare everything that’s cute and clean to Disney, deal with it ). I had booked us into the Delta Suites because it was the only hotel I could find decent last-minute space at, and even then I had to use my “I’m a travel agent” card to get us in (*sigh* membership does have it’s privileges. They’re few and far between, but I’ll take what I can get). Our suite had two fireplaces, a full kitchen, a bed you could loose yourself in and a mountain view, way nicer than I thought I’d booked, but very sweet.

Most of our time was spent wandering the village, exploring and checking out the shops and events that went with the festival. Our personal favorite was the dog day, where they had dog agility performances and – love this – a dog costume parade. There was a woman in a Hawaiian shirt pushing a stroller with two pugs wearing leis and grass skirts, while the other three identially-dressed pugs followed behind, it was so cute!

But the highlight by far of the weekend was the Ziplining. Whistler Ziptrek has a great setup, and, since I had ziplined before in Costa Rica and knew I loved it (the BF just went with it, he luckily had no fear of heights), we went for the higher/longer Eagle tour, as opposed to the beginner Bear tour. We marched, in full harness-and-helmet glory through the festival crowds from the Ziptrek office to the van that took us up Whistler mountain, past the Olympic bobsled track en route. The platforms and equipment was impressive (there was none of that ”I don’t trust this to hold all our weight” feeling), but nothing really mattered as we flew back and forth over the river to end right back in the village. On the longest line if you made it in under 45 seconds you were going more than 80km/h, and the heaviest guy went so fast the guide’s leather gloves literally caught fire as he tried to apply the breaks!

It was a short journey to Whistler, but I finally get what all the hype is about, as the atmosphere in the village is buzzing and, if you’re a skier, you couldn’t ask for more options to be right at your fingertips. It was still a lot of fun, and not once did I have to don technicolour ski pants (I mean, really, do all these people get dressed in the dark? Or is it so they can be found by rescue crews in case they get lost?) or waddle through the crowds in non-flexible ski boots. We really do have a jewel right here in our backyard. And I got another pin on the map!

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Zipping over Whistler