Today was our last snowboarding day in Whistler for this trip. We were up early to queue up or the Whisler gondola, but there was still a long line. All the American long-weekenders, fair weather Canadian snow hounds, and local Vancouverites displaced by the closing of two of the town mountains to preserve the snow for the Olympics were represented in vast numbers. Avalanche conrol was sill bombing the mountain when we got up top, but the peak chair was running, so that was a good sign that they were opening the alpine areas. We took a warm-up run down green, but everything was amazingly chopped up, even though it was early. The lift queue was nuts! Continue reading ‘Saigo no Yuki no Hi’
Archive for the 'Travel' Category
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The powder poaching pirates were denied their booty!
Continuous overnight snows laid arond 50cm of new snow on top of what was already there, with another 15cm or so predicted to fall during the day until the system passes around noon. We headed out to make the lift opening at 08:30, slogging through the slush laden village mall to queue up in the crazy Whistler gondola line. All the lights on the status indicator were at standby or closed, and the gondola was not moving. Some time after lift opening time, the Blackcomb gondola started moving, but not loading. Over an hour after lift opening time, a liftie came out and said that there was a tree across the upper gondola line, and this in conjunction with bad weather, meant that Whistler would be only open from base to midstation, and it would be almost an hour until the gondola would actually open. Continue reading ‘Repel Boarders!’
That’s a good sign! I don’t think the freezing level was forecast to be this low, but during the walk to dinner, the drizzle in Whistler Village turned to a light flurry. The temperature has dropped a little more, and the falling snow is piling up instead of melting away. This portents well for riding conditions tomorrow! Woo hoo!
Symphony lift opened today after avalanche control made Flute Bowl safe. An arriving weather system brought continuous snowfall all day, but it also came with whipping winds and lower temperatures. The 1000-meter freezing level made for snowfall for most of the mountains from around halfway up to the midstation. When we reached the top of the Whistler gondola, winds were pretty high and visibility quite poor. The lights were green, so we began traversing over to the Harmony lift and rode it up through the blizzard conditions to the top, where the winds were biting, and the visibility down to below 50-meters. We’ve dropped into Harmony bowl on many an occasion in marginal weather, but this pretty much beat all previous “poor judgement” descents. Turning from the first pitch onto the second, the visibility dropped to the point that it was riding by inertial guidance only, tracking from one course marker dot to the next. Continue reading ‘Welcome to the White Room’
We hit Whistler on Monday and Tuesday. There was a good amount of snowfall on both days, supposedly around 15cm settled times two days, but the high freezing level made for some sticky, packing snow on Monday. It was pretty much snow flurries at the top of green chair, and rain halfway down. It was gruelling and miserable. The snow was soft, but very heavy and difficult to ride on. Tuesday had a higher freezing level and more new snow, so we returned to Whistler to crank some stashes of untracked, deep powder. The alpine areas were still undergoing avalanche control, so were not open. It was still raining down at the green chair base, but it wasn’t too bad. At least the snow was soft. Today, they opened Seventh Heaven up again, so we returned to Blackcomb. Two days worth of deep snow made for lots of fun in the gladed areas. The open bowls were pretty windswept, and there was not much new development over what was there on Sunday. Hopefully the Whistler alpine areas will be open tomorrow so we will have some new powder to cut up. Rain will probably return to the area tomorrow afternoon, but hopefully the freezing level will remain low. I’m not really optomistic. Continue reading ‘Rain, Snow, and Freezing Level’
It was drizzling in town as forecast, so we headed up to Seventh Heaven on Blackcomb to stay above the freezing level. Snow was soft in places, but not “powder”. Sticky and slow. There was a fairly good windchill up top, with a serious headwind heading down the first pitch that combined with the sticky snow to prevent forward motion. Most areas were pretty ridden out, but there were a few stashes here and there. We rode down throught the terrain garden on our last run down, then caught the lift back up to the top and rode PTP over to Whistler then downloaded on the gondola – no point in burning out our legs and wasting time on krappy conditions on the rideout! Are we “snow snobs”? Supposedly there’s more rain overnight and tomorrow with the same 1800 meter freezing level, possibly some high winds, maybe subsiding tomorrow. Whee. Doesn’t look good for tomorrow… To sprinkle powdered sugar on our already dubious day, when we went by Sushi-ya for dinner, the space was dark, and there was what looked like a “this space available” sign in the window. Fabio went upstairs and there was no “we’ve moved to…” sign on the door. Guess our favorite sushi place in Whistler is no more. Boo. Sachi Sushi was our fall-back. Sushi was good except for maybe the BBQ smoked salmon roll, which was a little on the dry side. The beef tataki was ma-ma. Chocolate ice cream at Cows made everything all better. Continue reading ‘First Snowboarding Day of 2010’
Okay, we’re here now. Check-in was as slow as usual in HNL, but security was quick and professional, so we got through in time to go to KBC for some wings, pizzas and beer. The two pizzas were $20 USD each (ouch!), but were excellent. All told, we ended up dropping $31 USD each for everything including a good tip for the cool server dude. We met Kevin and Naomi at the gate, and we were shortly boarded. The center overhead bins in the 767-300-2 (four-door/no overwing exits) were a little small for the Kifaru X-Ray with side pockets, so I had to pull the laptop power supply and ultrapod out and put them inside the pack for the bin to close. On takeoff, a bad baby immediately set to screeching and wailing inconsolably, but after bevvie service, the turbulence set in and I was rocked to sleep. Continue reading ‘In Whistler’
Hope last year went well for everyone out there, and that this year goes even better!
I’ve been working on the 2010 SNM wallpaper image, but I don’t have it finished yet. Hopefully I can get it done before I fly up to Vancouver next week, but I still have some snowboard repairs, waxing, packing and some household plumbing tasks to perform, so keep your fingers crossed! It’s quite wonderful, and distinct from last year’s one.
In the meantime, ride safe, and I’ll see you out there in the snow and on the trails!
On the domestic flight from Sapporo to Nagoya, the JDM flight attendants were offering drinks and mints up until the wheels came down. On the overseas flight from Nagoya to Honolulu, the “Asian” attendants passed by once with coffee/English tea/green tea, at which point most people still had their during-meal drink, so didn’t need the post meal coffee yet. They even brought out the pre-landing snack just after collecting the dinner trays, and at the appointed snack time, the juice came out, but no effing coffee/English tea/green tea. WTF?! Oh yeah, and where the F was my pre-meal drink that I usually get? I got it on the outbound flight last week. This crew sucked.
(0)Just got back from Japan. JO 084 from Nagoya had a good tailwind, so came in about half-an-hour early. There was a fair amount of turbulence though, but not as much as would have been expected from the doom notices given by the flight crew before takeoff. I could immediately see why I couldn’t get my customary “C” seat, since the majority of the flight was taken up by a school trip. Nothing quite like being surrounded by shrieking schoolgirls! Too bad I was instead seated next to all the freak “normal” passengers, like the girl next to me with her overdone fingernails who stirred her food but didn’t eat any of it, and goofy ADD hip-hop sideways hat nervous energy dude whose mere presence made me want to just clobber him.
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