Blackcomb/Whistler - 02/10,11,12

After a nice pleasant drive up the Sea to Sky on the 9th, the snow kicked in early on the 10th, and that was pretty lucky.  Heard from many folks that had been up for the last week about how “firm” things had been, by the time I did my first line on Monday on Blackcomb the new nuking snow was making the early groomers pretty sweet, the rest of the day ski lines were refilled, snow kept dumping and the winds were howling – which kept the upper parts of both mountains closed.  But that did allow me poke around on the new (old Harmony) Crystal chair, nice alignment, and I also bounced over to Whistler on a solo ride in a Peak-to-Peak bucket (lots of space to wander around solo) to ski my first runs ever on Garbanzo lift – pretty nice, wind protected and would be great in a “real normal” snow year.  Normal snow year – don’t think I’ve ever in my life seen so many trees, rocks, boulders and massive rocks all over the mountain, amazing!  Skied Whistler to the bottom and rode back up Blackcomb to spend the afternoon repeating early lines.  Some lift lines do to “Family Day” in Canada?  (Family Day?), but I always went to the lifts with the shortest lines.  Big winds kept the upper mountain closed. 

11Th – Started out on Blackcomb again, more new snow over night, pretty great quality groomers, after some early runs on Blackcomb we jumped over to Whistler for some variety, still nice but a lot of folks, so back to the base and back up Blackcomb. No real lines at Blackcomb, winds were blowing, snow falling, soft cut and packed pow everywhere, easy no crowd skiing on lots of runs.

12Th – The big day, after the two previous days of snow (6”+ avg), Wednesday was the locals big day in a very long time – 15+ plus with lots of wind loading in the right places.  We did the First Track deal on Whistler, jumped into the lift line at 5:50am (ouch!), but by 7am the line up was massive.  Big piggy breakfast, big sun on the upper mountain, pretty big winds, big new snow, pretty dang nice old man B-day for me. Skied lots of deep. Rode the Peak to Peak back to Blackcomb and finished the day with lots of great lines, soft snow, stayed away from the early crowd fanatic lift lines and finished with a few GearJammer bump runs to beat us up. Watched a lot of “big” boys skiing big lines and hucking off ever rock in sight.  Pretty impressive.

Great trip, Whistler is always great, great food at Citta’s (perfect French Onion Soup, pizza and burgers, plus vib).  Fun trip, conditions greatly improved during our visit. Looking good on forecasts for the near future.  Makes me happier about going again.

Other – Easy parking in the basement, soups pretty much anything you could want – plus Chick Noodle at every main restaurant on both mountains (how hard it that to mention? Painfully hard!). Coverage on Piste was great top to bottom, and improving everywhere else rapidly with the new snow.