The net result is that tens of thousands of tourists are stranded, as it’s damn near impossible to get back and forth without the Sea to Sky Highway, where the slide took place. The ride is two hours on the Sea to Sky Highway, eight hours if you take the detour. Ouch.

While it’s not likely to happen during the 2010 Winter Olympics, imagine if it did? What a nightmare.

One project that hasn’t made too many headlines, though, is Whistler’s other planned gondola, which will connect Whistler Creekside with Kadenwood, an exclusive neighbourhood nestled slopeside. (Apparently it is the “highest buildable point on Whistler Mountain” according to Kadenwoodhomes.com). The reason you haven’t heard of it? The gondola isn’t meant for you - it’s for the super rich. (Apologies if you are super rich. And if you are: can I have some money?)

According to a Globe and Mail article published last year:

“Now, you’re no doubt wondering how much it costs to live in this neighbourhood. Well, lots go for between $1.5-million and $2.5-million, depending on their size. Then you have to build a house on it, which in most cases is another million or two or three or four, depending on how big you want it.”

Funnily enough the article is available as a PDF on Playground.com, a website operated by Intrawest (the parent company of Whistler Blackcomb resort). The site is geared toward folks with enough dough to buy ski resort real estate and subsequently build a custom home. Not exactly a site for the common man.

Kadenwood is currently serviced by a slopeside run on the way to Creekside.

• The resort is aiming to average 265,000 visits a year, a goal easily attained in the 1990s, when the resort attracted more than 300,000 visitors yearly.
• Taos is counting on a 12% skier lift thanks to snowboarders visiting the resort.
• Families who love Taos are taking their business elsewhere because the parents ski while the kids snowboard. Quoth the article: “We don’t go to mountains that don’t allow snowboarding,” said snowboarder J.D. Hutchison, a Pasadena, Texas, parent visiting Taos for the first time with his snowboarding kids. “How can we? You’re hard pressed to get a kid on skis these days. Snowboarding is cool. And you can’t fight that.”

Okay, off this Taos thing for a while.

Park City has added another strange law to the pile by “outlawing” reckless skiing and snowboarding. What this means is that if your skiing/snowboarding is deemed to be “reckless” at resorts within Park City (like Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley), you could face a class B misdemeanor, which punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and up to six months in jail. This is basically the same punishment as a DUI. The person who makes the call on whether you are reckless or not? Ski patrol.

On one hand, I thought this was actually a pretty good idea. There are plenty of jackasses on the hill who ski/ride with reckless abandon. But on the other hand, I’m really not comfortable with the power now put in ski patrol’s hands. Today, we have police officers on bikes; maybe it’s time for police offers who ride, too.

The results are pretty entertaining. Most include gratuitous shredding, angry ski patrollers and a lot of shocked skiers.  One dude went as far as riding down in an old-school hockey mask. The production quality of most submissions posted are outstanding, and it’s neat to see how far a lot of entries went in order to get up the mountain undetected.

When the contest was announced, there were four “skiers only” resorts in the United States: Deer Valley, Mad River Glen , Taos and Alta. Taos subsequently announced snowboarders would be allowed on the hills in March; the big day is March 19.

Contest winners are to be announced shortly.

Some of you may remember me from the few posts that I made about cycling back towards the end of last summer. Since then, Adam has done the lion’s share of updates on this site; after all, it is snowboarding season, and he is the authoritative source on that subject. Meanwhile, aside from going to Whistler with Adam last month, I’ve been productive in other ways: such as playing video games, watching TV, and…and…playing video games? So at the behest of surly Adam, it’s time to get with the program.

Last week I went back to Whistler under the guise of vacation so that I could complete the mandatory “go to Whistler twice each year” requirement that has been in effect for the past 3 years. My girlfriend and I left on a Friday night and ‘boarded Saturday through Tuesday before taking the red-eye out on Tuesday night. And here’s the scoop…

The Trip

Our typical Whistler trips look something like 4-5 people, a shared house/apartment with a few beds, a taskmaster who makes sure the group is on the lift by 9:00am, and a snowboarding experience that is often augmented by Danzig’s Mother.

This most recent trip was completely different. My girlfriend and I went to Whistler for vacation, and we decided to do things differently. For starters, we flew first class from Toronto to Vancouver. No more buying Harvey’s breakfast sandwiches for $5 each. Secondly, we stayed at the Pan Pacific hotel, which is located right next to the Whistler & Blackcomb gondolas. With each trip back to Whistler, we’ve gotten closer and closer to the village proper, but this time we were in the prime spot. Lastly, we treated this Whistler trip very much like a vacation, which is to say we ordered room service, took our time getting to the mountain, and were a bit more relaxed overall. This last part was probably influenced that we went in to this trip recovering from what might be the flu.

Oh, and my iPod was without Danzig, so Bulls On Parade had to act in its place.

The Conditions

Well, they weren’t as good as our mid-January trip.

The only thing that was considerably better was the visibility. We had clear blue skies for 3 out of 4 days.

The base was large enough that we had all the terrain that we could handle, but the snow wasn’t fresh. It didn’t snow while we were there, and areas like Symphony Express were so cut up that it wasn’t worth the time and effort. Furthermore, I didn’t realize that the World Cup was going on in Whistler when we scheduled our trip, which meant that famous runs like the Dave Murray Downhill and Lower Franz were closed. The only way to Creekside was through Peak to Creek, which was very crowded due to traffic in the priority line-ups.

The Runs

With all of the runs below red chair closed and Symphony a mess, we spent a large portion of our Whistler time riding the Garbanzo chair, taking runs such as Tokum, Bear Paw, and Raven. As mentioned in other posts on this site, the Garbanzo chair is centrally located so that you can easily get to other parts of the mountain, it has many blue and black runs with easy access to glades, and has very small lift lines. We would usually take the Fitzsimmons chair up to Garbanzo instead of getting on the Whistler gondola. We spent some time at Harmony as well, but on this trip, it was the most crowded area on Whistler.

With Blackcomb, we usually spend a lot of time in Seventh Heaven, but like Symphony, this is an area that needs fresh snow to really be fun. After a few runs there, we distributed our time across Crystal chair, Glacial Express, and Excelerator.

Blackcomb wasn’t busy as all, and as a result, this was my first trip where I spent as much time on Blackcomb as I did on Whistler.

The Pubs

OK, our night life was pretty dull. We were both recovering from illness, and of course we were both tired from snowboarding each day, but at least we made it out.

We hit up the usuals such as the Brewhouse and Longhorn, and we went out for some fancier dinner at Hy’s.

We did lunch at Garibaldi Lift Co (first time I’ve been there), and I’m surprised that this isn’t as popular as Longhorn’s - a very nice place that is even closer to the base of Whistler.

And last but not least, through no fault of the breakfast bagel, we visited Mogul’s a shocking 2 out of 4 mornings on the trip. I’m usually much closer to 100%…

Some Other Potentially Useful Information

- While I’m still 100% behind the Perimeter bus, it was naive of me to think that their buses wouldn’t contain drinking, obnoxious teenagers. One particularly annoying girl was singing for most of the ride up while her empty Absolut bottle rolled around on the bus floor.

- Why spend time getting over to Symphony Express, when you have great glade runs on the Garbanzo chair? Runs like Unsanctioned, Club 21, and In Deep seem to barely be in use and are easily accessible.

- I’m not sure if it is the time of year or simply the day of the week, but on Tuesday, we had great luck with finally getting some runs in from the Excelerator chair on Blackcomb. There are lots of decent blue runs from Excelerator that we’ve barely been on because this lift is typically crowded. On Tuesday, we didn’t have to wait at all.

- Don’t order the crab cakes as Hy’s. 2 for $15 and they are the size of a loonie.

- Mogul’s breakfast bagel is still the best food in town. If you’re going to Whistler on a budget, eat this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner :).

So there you have it. I love Whistler, and it was another great time. This will probably be the end of my snowboarding season, but perhaps I’ll make it to Blue Mountain to get one more ride in before the warm weather approaches.

My suggestions:

•  Snow sliding
•  Extreme snow fun having
• Mad pow mashing
• Extreme Lift Line Waiting

… somehow, I don’t think I’m going to win.

Second prize is two lift tickets to The Canyons Resort and some t-shirts, which is still cool.

Speaking of the Perimeter Bus, check out this letter I wrote to them when I got home:

“I just wanted to drop you a line to say:

1. Your service rocks, and

2. One gentleman in particular, a van driver in Whistler named Charlie, rocks in particular.

Earlier today, we made a super-last minute decision to try and get on the 4pm bus to Vancouver instead of the 6:30 bus. We made this decision at 3:30. Of course, we should have made this decision WAY earlier, but being three guys who had been distracted with snowboarding all day… well, it kind of slipped our minds. Anyway, we were lucky enough to run into Charlie outside the Whistler Vacation Rentals office, and when he heard of our situation he agreed to load us up in his van and scoot us over to the bus loop. We looked pretty funny rushing toward the bus in our snowboarding gear (and even
dumber at the airport later!), but we made the bus thanks to Charlie. He went out of his way to help us out when he could have, with very good reason, simply said, “Sorry, you need to take your scheduled bus.” His help made our trip back to Toronto much more pleasant. Kudos to Charlie and your entire top-notch service, from the greeters at the airport to the friendly drivers who got us where we needed to go. I’ll never take the Greyhound to Whistler again!”

Suffice it to say I liked their service. They were extremely tickled with the letter, which is going on their new website.