Airborne
Monday morning, Jim and I headed over to the heli-skiing rendezvous point, bubbly and excited at the prospect of our first-ever helicopter snowboarding adventure. The company handed our avalanche beacons, pointed us to our lovely guide Paige, and bussed us out to the heliport, some ten minutes' drive outside Whistler. There, under threatening low clouds and with an increasing sense of foreboding, we got trained in avalanche procedures and helicopter safety. After about an hour and several scouting flights by one of the light choppers, the company told us they wouldn't be able to fly, and they drove us back to the resort. We didn't make it onto the slopes until almost noon, so we lost more than half a day. Even though the weather didn't look much better for Tuesday, we decided to try to fly again anyway.

We spent the rest of the day in the Symphony Amphitheater, a group of bowls and glades that we hadn't explored previously. Visibility at the summit was atrocious - five or ten feet sometimes, with flat light making what little terrain was visible very difficult to read. Once we struggled down to the bottom of the bowls, though, we found riding through the sparse trees to be quite enjoyable. Jim called one snowboardcross-like track the best run he'd ever taken!

The next morning, we were out at the helipad again, bright an early. The weather was considerably better, and everyone was excited. After a short repeat of the safety lesson, our group of eleven (eight customers and three guides) boarded the helicopter. The door closed, the rotor spun up, and suddenly, almost magically, we were airborne.

I'd never flown in a helicopter before. The feeling is quite different from flying in an airplane, at least a large one, and pretty amazing. The takeoff is imperceptible, and feels effortless somehow, despite the engine noise, but level flight feels labored. The feeling that the machine is not meant to fly is palpable from the inside, but from the outside they look quite graceful and the rotor's ability to hold up the vehicle seems reasonable. The flight was dramatic. The machine flew low and banked hard, so we frequently found ourselves staring straight down into the heavily wooded valleys below. After a short time, the trees thinned out and we found ourselves flying over the vast sheets of snow we were headed for. Finally, the copter slowed down and we realized we had reached our landing point.

Like takeoff, landing was completely imperceptible. As the engine speed was reduced slightly and the cloud of blown snow receded, we followed our guide out the door and huddled on our knees in the snow just a few feet from the helicopter. On the other side, another guide removed our skis and boards from the basket, then hunkered down as well. A few thumbs ups were exchanged, and the pilot lifted off in a huge blast of snowy air, then rushed foward and down over a cliff. Suddenly, everything was silent and we were standing on top of the world on an infinite field of snow.

Snowboarding in these mountains was like nothing I've ever done before. I'd ridden in powder, and getting around here wasn't basically different from that, but doing it on these vast, seemingly unending slopes, perched high above cliffs that dropped precipitously into the void, that was something new and very different. It took some time to become comfortable with the heights, but I followed our guide and everything turned out just fine.

We made four runs. At the end of each one, our guide would collect the skis and boards into a pile and crouch next to it. The rest of us would hunker down in a kneeling huddle perhaps ten feet away. With remarkable accuracy, the helicopter would set down between us and we would board. It was a sad moment when we got into those cramped seats for the final time. As we lifted off we could see our tracks coming all the way down from the distant top of the mountain, and it was hard to imagine riding anywhere else after that.
- posted by Joachim @ 9:00 AM

 
Glacier Assault
On our second day at Whistler/Blackcomb, we decided to check out Blackcomb Mountain. We had purchased Fresh Tracks tickets for the entire week, but switching mountains is no longer a problem due to the new Peak-to-Peak cable car. After a few runs on Whistler, we crossed directly between the main lodges and began our day at Blackcomb.

The first few runs weren't great. Most of the snow had been blown off the Seventh Heaven bowl, and we scratched our way down to the lift as best we could. After a bit of a wait for a lost team member, we headed back up to the top and tried going down the other way, to the bottom of the Glacier Express lift. Here we had lunch and prepared for the rest of our Blackcomb adventure. Our plan: to take on the Blackcomb Glacier!

The Glacier Express lift took us up to just above the bottom of the Showcase T-bar. Seeing the T-bar, Jon blanched and began muttering about the only thing he'd asked for on the entire trip was that we not ride a T-bar! Well, he and I had had some bad experiences at Breckenridge, but I was hoping things would work out better for us here. We got in line.

Don got on first, followed by Jim. I was a couple of places behind Jim, and Jon was a couple behind me. Unlike Breckenridge, they didn't make snowboarders ride with anyone else, which is nice because apparently we have only about a fifty-fifty chance of making it up the mountain even in the best conditions. I lined up at the gate, watching for the anchor-shaped bar at the end of the springloaded cable as it came up, fast. the lifty got it behind my front leg and I grabbed on just in time. The tension loaded up, and suddenly I was moving forward. I stumbled almost immediately, but got the board lined up straight, looked straight ahead, and was fine for the rest of the trip.

Not so some of my companions! Don was wandering back and forth along the track and looking shaky, but he managed to hang on longer than Jim, who went down less than halfway up the slope, which rises 150 vertical meters. He somehow kept his grip on the bar, spinning, flipping, and kicking up a cloud of snow. Probably three quarters of the way up, Don finally snagged an edge and was down and out. As he collected himself and sat up, he got a close-up view of the spectacle of Jim sailing by on his back, still spinning and kicking.

I made it to the top and tossed away the bar. Jon made it too, without any troubles - in fact for the rest of the day he kept recommending we take every T-bar we saw. We looked over a tourist information sign about the glacier while we waited for them to trudge up the steep hill - no mean feat at over 7,000 feet.


From the tourist overlook, we got our first view of the glacier, and it was impressive. My photos, taken with my telephone, really don't do it justice. It's just huge; a gargantuan bowl - large even by the standards of this giant mountain. It's just one enormous bowl full of snow, a huge playground. After taking a couple of snapshots at the edge, we dropped into one of our favorite runs of the trip. It went on for ever, of course - we covered six miles from the top of the glacier down to the lift - and the snow was soft and fluffy. Near the bottom Jim, Jon and I even ventured a bit out of bounds (not too far, though - we could see the tracks from people coming down from the ridge and back into the resort), where we found a wonderland of deep powder. The glacier run was simply fantastic, and we all felt like heroes once we'd done it!
- posted by Joachim @ 10:12 AM

 
Return To Whistler!

After a grueling 17 hour journey, my four friends and I finally arrived at Whistler Blackcomb ski resort last night. In the end, it was worth it. Whistler is as amazing as I remember -- maybe more.

We got up early this morning to use our "Fresh Tracks" tickets. The gondola took us up to the Roundhouse lodge, and also brought us together with our daylong companion, a snowboarding instructor I will refer to as "Bob". Bob's students hadn't shown up for their lesson, so he was free for the day, but in uniform. We decided to spend the day together -- travelling with him, we could skip the lift lines, but he couldn't get this preferential treatment by himself. We found the bargain to be heavily in our favor, because in addition to skipping the lines, we also got the services of an experienced mountain guide, and even a few teaching tips, at no cost.

Our group includes snowboarders with different skill levels. Jeff and Don are relatively inexperienced, while John, Jim, and I are more accustomed to riding in powder and steep slopes. This became an issue because of the fantastic snow conditions on the mountain. There's a lot of deep powder as a result of some enormous snowfalls over the past week. Don and Jeff did quite well and are improving rapidly, but they found the deep snow taxing. Mostly it wasn't an issue because most of the bowls here have trails running through them, but we did encounter some difficulty heading down from Whistler peak through the Cirque, a tiny notch of a trail cut into the side of the mountain. I got a picture of Jim and Jon descending into the bowl, but unfortunately didn't snap a shot of Jon walking back up from the precipice that nearly killed him. Luckily he went first and waved me off, so I had a relatively safe trip back down to the lift.

We have really been enjoying our stay so far. The condo is spacious and located very near the lifts (and everything else), and we have been taking full advantage. So far the amount we've spent on beer and food has been a bit excessive, but then again, we're on vacation!
- posted by Joachim @ 2:21 AM