[Photos above: Quatchi in his natural environment; plotting a route; riding Peak 2 Peak, ascending the Creekside gondola]
Our last day dawned with promise - big white flakes in the village. We elected to begin on Blackcomb. We got off the shuttle at the Blackcomb base and got on the Wizard Express. It is a bubble chair but as the bubble was coated with snow, there was no way I wanted to be closed in on it. Instead we kept it open and had inches of fresh snow on us by the time we got to the top. From it we took the Solar Coaster. By the time we were at the top of the second chair we were covered with snow and raring to hit the powder. It was definitely the most fresh snow of any day I have been out this year. On our first run, Springboard, we were in fresh snow over the tops of our boots. It was tiring as we figured out how to deal with it. We were both wishing we had powder skis to float on top instead of sinking in with our skinny Eastern skis. As challenging as it was though it was so much fun. The snow was soft underfoot and so quiet as we floated through it. Huge flakes continued to fall as we skiied.
After that first run we took Wishbone, one of the two runs of the day according to the lifties, and then went on to Zig Zag. Every run was covered with huge amounts of fluffly loose snow. By mid-morning we were exhausted and stopped at the Glacier Creek Lodge for a hot chocolate break. We decided to ski more runs in the Crystal Ridge area as being amongst the trees these runs were nicely protected from the wind with great visitbility. Over the course of the morning we did Trapline, Ridge Runner, Twist & Shout, Backstage Pass, and Rock 'n' Roll doing the circuit up Excelerator to Crystal chair each time.
By 1:00-1:30 we were getting hungry and decided to start making our way somewhere to eat. As the snow had now stopped and the sky was clear, we decided to take Jersey Cream to the top and the Peak 2 Peak across to Whistler. The views were breathtaking.As we did not take a glass bottom gondola this time we looked out the windows instead of down for a whole different perspective.
As we had such a fantastic lunch at Dusty's yesterday we decided to make our way down to Creekside again for lunch today. This time we took Pony Trail to Little Red Run to Franz's. Franz's run is actually going to the Women's Downhill and GS course for the Olympics. It was neat that we took the Men's Olympic run one day and the Women's the next. As with yesterday, the bottom part of the mountain was very slushy and a lot of work for our tired legs. The restaurant was like an oasis at the bottom of the run.
We had a fabulous lunch and then took the Creekside gondola up and skiied back to download on the Whistler gondola as it was already later in the afternoon and our legs were toast. What a fantastic day!
Upon getting back to the condo we had a good soak in the hot tub. Even with almost 10 hours of sleep last night I was having trouble staying awake in the hot tub. After the hot tub we walked into the heart of the village and did a little browsing. We decided to have a quiet last night in so we bought a couple of slices of pizza at Avalanche and ate at home and watched Dancing with the Stars.
It has been a great four days of skiing. I forgot how much I love Whistler. I hope it won't be as long before I am back again.
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