Getting There

This time Sunday morning, I should hopefully be airborne, flying an Air Canada 777 en route to Hong Kong by way of Vancouver. (I chose that flight because as an Air Canada Elite member, I had a decent shot at upgrading to one of their Executive suites. Alas, I have been waitlisted.) In Vancouver, I’ll hook up with my brother, who is arriving an hour earlier via WestJet.

We’ll have a couple of hours to kill before the next Perimeter Bus to Whistler, so it’s likely we’ll have a beer or three. My cousin, who operates the best burger restaurant in Vancouver, is going to pop by to say hello.

Staying There

Despite now having visited 10 times, I’ve only stayed in a hotel twice: once at the Listel hotel and once at the Mountainside Lodge. The rest of the time I have rented condos or houses. This time, however, I’m staying at the Hilton Whistler, and I’m definitely excited to check it out. We’ve got a suite, so we should have plenty of room to spread out and relax.

Riding There

As I’ve mentioned, conditions look off the hook for early season! They’ve had more than eight feet of snow this season already, with more than 4,300 acres already opened. Most of my favourite non-bowl areas (Garbonzo area on Whistler, Crystal Chair on Blackcomb) are now open. Another 50-80 cm are expected tomorrow and Sunday. So this has the potential to turn into an epic couple of days of riding. (There’s also the risk that conditions will be crazy and zero visibility. I’m praying that’s not the case.)

You can be sure that once the trip has concluded, there will be a full report! I’ll also update my Guide to Whistler, which I’ve maintained since 2006.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s return to blogging about snowboarding, I am heading to Whistler for a few days next week. With a baby due in January, I knew my annual week-long trip to Whistler to ride was not going to happen. I had resigned myself to skipping this year entirely, but some vacation days to burn and a fair bit of snow recently have changed my mind. As a result, I’m heading up Sunday (the 27th). The plan is to ride two days, and come back Wednesday.

I know conditions can’t possibly be like what I experienced in 2010, but with up to 80 centimetres scheduled to arrive by Tuesday, I’m hoping to encounter some pretty good early season conditions. Whistler only has a couple of chairs operating right now (green chair, red chair), but with Blackcomb opening on the 24th and a big dump of snow on the way, I’m hoping available terrain will expand greatly by the time I get on the hill on the 28th.

Regardless, it will be fun.

It’s been more than a year since anything has been posted at Highly Obsessed. And even when we did post some stuff last year, it didn’t last long. It’s been a struggle the past couple of years.

So, what happened? It’s not like we enjoy snowboarding less than we used to. Personally, I found myself riding fewer total days; instead of heading to Blue Mountain or Mt. St. Louis Moonstone for a few day trips, I was saving it for trips to real mountains like Whistler or Jay Peak or Tremblant. So I was only riding maybe a dozen days a year. I guess this made me feel like I wasn’t much of an authority on snowboarding anymore.

And in a way, I don’t think it’s going to get any easier. We are going to have a baby just as snowboarding season gets into full swing. My job is never slow, and I do a fair bit of travel is involved. I also like to spend time working out, playing video games, and reading. I also play hockey and ultimate frisbee. So there never seems to be enough time in the day already.

But with all that said, a funny thing has been happening. This blog refuses to die, and I find it both interesting and inspiring. It gets all sorts of traffic, regardless of season. People still email me constantly with questions, contests and news. I still get the occasional ACL tear inquiry (and I’ve had laser eye surgery, another topic which seems to garner tons of questions, so I’m happy to answer those, too).

So I started to think: do I really need to be on the mountain 100 days a year to maintain an interesting snowboarding blog? I don’t think so. And do I still love to snowboard? Hell yes. So I’ve decided to fire up the blog again, and I’m really looking forward to it.

The timing is right, too. A week today, I will leave for a quick, four-day, pre-baby trip to Whistler. I didn’t want to miss out on Whistler this year, and they’re getting dumps of snow regularly right now. But all that is for my next post.

Adam

(Image courtesy of Tommy Ironic)

I find there’s a similar parallel with bikes; look back 10 years, and no-one wore helmets. Now it’s perfectly acceptable and normal.

But anyway. I just came across a really interesting report from the Canadian Ski Council. In it, the Council reports that helmet usage – especially among youth – is up significantly over the past four years.

According to the report:

“… usage has increased from 67% of all skiers and riders in 2006 to 71% in 2010. This is significantly higher than in the US, where reports found that 57% of skiers and riders wore helmets in 2010.”

The report has a couple of really interesting caveats, though. For example, usage in the 35-44 age bracket did not increase. Moreover, Ontario and British Columbia have the dubious honour of least usage, with 67% and 66% usage respectively. The keener province? New Brunswick, with 95% usage. Wow.

• Fernie
• Nakiska
• Kimberley
• Mont Tremblant
• Mont Sutton
• Whistler Blackcomb

You can read about recent sales here. Among the notable ones: Aspen.co for $22,500, and Breckenridge for $8,499.

Within the industry, we view domain names like real estate. If you get the good ones, they’ll only increase in value!

Whistler Blackcomb Parks 2011 Update from Lucas Ouellette on Vimeo.

The problem is, Vancouver winter weather fluctuates between “just cold enough to snow on the mountains nearby” and “warm”. And this year, the weather in Vancouver has been very warm. So warm, in fact, that Cypresss had to close early due to a lack of snow. And with the Olympics only weeks away, the world is watching as VANOC scrambles to put together courses for halfpipe, ski and snowboard cross and other competitions with a combination of snow they saved and… wood and straw. Seriously. There is such a lack of snow on Cypress that structures to support the courses now need to be built, and they are going to be partially composed of wood and straw.

This is extremely embarrassing, and news coverage of the problem grows daily. (Check out this update here, or simply use Google News to locate one of the hundreds of stories now detailing the problem).

It should be noted that Whistler currently has more snow than they know what to do with. As I left they were constructing the downhill courses and they looked great. But again, if VANOC had no choice but to use Cypress, I suppose it was an understandable calculated risk… which now appears to be working against them.

I have had the opportunity to really challenge myself as a snowboarder – to get better and try different things – and instead I have consistently settled for days upon days of throwing myself down groomed runs, happy that they were slightly more challenging and much much longer than Ontario.

It took 150 centimetres over the past week – yes, that’s how much it snowed while I was in Whistler – to show me that Whistler is an incredibly gigantic mountain area with so much terrain that you never have to do the same run twice. It also showed me how much more I needed to learn to become even remotely good at riding (by anything but Ontario standards).

As I mentioned in a previous post, we started the week with an epic dump that would set the tone for the entire trip. It literally snowed a minimum of 10-15 centimetres every day. This meant there was plenty of terrain to explore virtually risk-free; I mean, if you flub a drop or a steep run all you’re going to basically do is land in powder anyway. We used the first day to explore areas we were already relatively familiar with, but that were now covered in powder.

But it was a mini-tour by a cousin of mine who lives in the area who really opened our eyes. On our second day, he took us straight over to the Whistler Bowl area, a collection of bowls and chutes that were simply packed with powder. And although they were all inbounds, a fair bit of it was difficult to access if you didn’t know where you were going (Doom & Gloom, Christmas Tress, Frog Hollow). Which meant the powder stayed in there all week.

After a couple of days learning how to deal with knee-deep powder all the time, Steve and I gained a level of confidence in our riding I don’t think we had before. And from that point, we made it our purpose to only ride areas packed with pow, which meant avoiding groomed runs at all costs and instead exploring all areas of both mountains (and putting ourselves in a few precarious situations as well).

A week later, I’m now back at home. I am sore as hell from digging my ass out of powder, hitting trees head-first (lesson: always wear a helmet), hiking, hitting unexpected drops, pulling myself back from the edges of cliffs, and spending so much time leaning on by back foot while I pointed my board through mountains of snow that I can hardly move it. As one guy I ran into on Blackcomb Mountain said, the place was a “powder barn” all week. And I fear I’ll never see conditions like that again.

Some other highlights of our trip:

• We lined up for Blackcomb’s Glacier Express lift two days in a row, knowing there would be an assload of pow in there. As the few folks ahead of us made their runs down the mountain, everyone was cheering them on. They responded by hooting and hollering as they cut through knee-deep pow. It was pretty awesome.
• Hitting “surprise stashes” one would think to be tracked out that never were. Example: taking the t-bar run from Harmony down to Peak Chair. Despite it’s easy accessibility, it was always full of crazy snow.
• Spending 30 minutes hiking Flute Bowl for about four minutes of pow, and realizing it was totally worth it about 15 seconds into the run.
• Discovering that the Harmony Ridge area can actually drop you into any kind of terrain you like.
• Apres beers at the infamous Longhorn. Possibly the best place for beer in Whistler?
• Visiting four stores in Whistler to try and replace my snowboard leash, until I finally realize no-one knows what I’m talking about because no-one has them.

I have so many updates to the Whistler Guide at this point that it’s not even funny. I will try to get on that as soon as I can.