Playing in the snow
For the first time this Winter, Tucker and Melissa were heading out to Whistler and the snow conditions were not terrible!
A friend of ours has a chalet rented for five days and we were invited to spend the weekend over. We left Saturday morning to be able to hit the slopes around noon. I rented myself a pretty nice board, and after quickly eating a couple of sandwitches, we were on board the gondola, headed for the top of the mountain. I have to say, the bottom part was pretty bare, with large patches of dirt showing up here and there. The trails for the mountain biking were showing up in some areas. But, as we approached the top (well, not the top top, but the top of the gondola ride), we saw more snow. We did only a couple of runs down, mostly because I still fall all the time and it takes me a long time to snowboard down. That was enough for me, especially that my legs were getting pretty tired. Now, a couple of runs down is quite a bit of exercise, the first one taking almost one hour. Whistler is definitely not your local mountain! I thought that Tucker would take off to get a final run on his own, but unfortunately, when we came back to the Roundhouse (at the top of the gondola), the peak of the mountain was engulfed in dark clouds and it was starting to snow pretty hard. So we had a couple of sports drinks and waited in line for the gondola back down.
And it snowed. Lots, big flakes, very wet flakes. When we made it to the chalet it was coming down hard. We met with the group, showered and had a drink (our own version of apres-ski), then headed off to the village for dinner. We picked a pretty expensive restaurant, unfortunately, not really what we wanted to do, as both Tucker and I are saving our money for the upcoming trip to Europe. Then, the group came back to the chalet to get changed and get ready to go out. I had a splitting headache, probably from one of my falls with the snowboard, so I decided to stay behind and go to bed. As expected, it was not a very good sleep, especially when the group came back to the chalet after an evening of partying. But it's to be expected, can't be too picky when you get to stay for free :-)
Sunday, we thought was going to be an exciting day on the slopes, with all the snow that had fallen. I was too sore to go back on a snowboard, but I was ready to rent skis and get more fresh air. Well, a group of early risers called us back to tell us that the conditions were terrible (heavy, packed snow) and since most of the lifts were closed because of high winds, there were some pretty long line-ups. So we stayed in, watched TV and gossiped, some took naps to catch up from the light sleep of the night before. We had an early dinner and drove back to Vancouver. We almost didn't make it back, part of the road washed out under the heavy rains and highway 99 was closed for a few hours Sunday morning. Fortunately, the road crews were quick to react and we couldn't even tell where the washout happened when we drove back.
Now, I'm still sore and my head still hurts. I'm definitely not in shape for serious snowboarding. But our Saturday runs went really well. Tucker was following me and said I was turning quite nicely, really getting into the motion. Sweet!
A friend of ours has a chalet rented for five days and we were invited to spend the weekend over. We left Saturday morning to be able to hit the slopes around noon. I rented myself a pretty nice board, and after quickly eating a couple of sandwitches, we were on board the gondola, headed for the top of the mountain. I have to say, the bottom part was pretty bare, with large patches of dirt showing up here and there. The trails for the mountain biking were showing up in some areas. But, as we approached the top (well, not the top top, but the top of the gondola ride), we saw more snow. We did only a couple of runs down, mostly because I still fall all the time and it takes me a long time to snowboard down. That was enough for me, especially that my legs were getting pretty tired. Now, a couple of runs down is quite a bit of exercise, the first one taking almost one hour. Whistler is definitely not your local mountain! I thought that Tucker would take off to get a final run on his own, but unfortunately, when we came back to the Roundhouse (at the top of the gondola), the peak of the mountain was engulfed in dark clouds and it was starting to snow pretty hard. So we had a couple of sports drinks and waited in line for the gondola back down.
And it snowed. Lots, big flakes, very wet flakes. When we made it to the chalet it was coming down hard. We met with the group, showered and had a drink (our own version of apres-ski), then headed off to the village for dinner. We picked a pretty expensive restaurant, unfortunately, not really what we wanted to do, as both Tucker and I are saving our money for the upcoming trip to Europe. Then, the group came back to the chalet to get changed and get ready to go out. I had a splitting headache, probably from one of my falls with the snowboard, so I decided to stay behind and go to bed. As expected, it was not a very good sleep, especially when the group came back to the chalet after an evening of partying. But it's to be expected, can't be too picky when you get to stay for free :-)
Sunday, we thought was going to be an exciting day on the slopes, with all the snow that had fallen. I was too sore to go back on a snowboard, but I was ready to rent skis and get more fresh air. Well, a group of early risers called us back to tell us that the conditions were terrible (heavy, packed snow) and since most of the lifts were closed because of high winds, there were some pretty long line-ups. So we stayed in, watched TV and gossiped, some took naps to catch up from the light sleep of the night before. We had an early dinner and drove back to Vancouver. We almost didn't make it back, part of the road washed out under the heavy rains and highway 99 was closed for a few hours Sunday morning. Fortunately, the road crews were quick to react and we couldn't even tell where the washout happened when we drove back.
Now, I'm still sore and my head still hurts. I'm definitely not in shape for serious snowboarding. But our Saturday runs went really well. Tucker was following me and said I was turning quite nicely, really getting into the motion. Sweet!
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