My Day Off - Part 2 (Whistler Mountain)

Sunday, July 20th



A short bus ride from the Whistler Train Station took us into Whistler Village. Whistler is a resort town built in the 1960's to serve as home to the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort. While it has a permanent population of around 10,000 residents, tourism is its bread and butter. The ski lifts come right down into town and the rest of the village is composed of souvenir shops, restaurants, galleries and hotels.



Looking up through the village toward Whistler Mountain:







The four of us grabbed a quick lunch at a brasserie in town (it was Bastille Day, after all!). I got to sample the Canadian specialty of poutine. Composed of french fires covered with cheese curds and gravy, poutine is just the sort of heart attack on a plate I can't pass up!







After lunch, the four of us went our separate ways for the afternoon. Ken and Geoff went off on a zip line eco-tour. While zooming through the forests dangling from a zip line sounded like fun, Karl and I opted for a gondola ride up Whistler Mountain.







Of course, the gondola was built with skiers in mind, but it serves as a tourist attraction in the summer as well. The 20 minute trip took us from Whistler Village (at around 2,100 feet) near the top of Mount Whistler (at 6,100 feet).







About a third of the way up the mountain, there's a gondola station with the following warning:







Whistler is prime black bear habitat. The bears like to forage on the ski trails in the summer. We didn't see any bears on our trip up the mountain, but did see a couple later on - not up close and personal, but still cool! There are warnings posted everywhere about bear encounters - even in the village. The bears in Whistler have become adept at opening the doors of parked cars to look for food!



The first station served as the jumping off point for Whistler Blackcomb's big summer attraction: mountain biking. The ski trails are converted to mountain bike-ways with ramps for jumping and all sorts of obstacles. The ski lifts are converted to carry bicyclists as well as their bikes up the mountain.







We continued on to 6,100 feet and emerged onto the windy mountain top.






The actual peak of Whistler Mountain was another 1,000 feet up and a ride on a chair lift away. (It's beyond the Canadian flags in the photo above.) We opted not to take the chair lift ride, but hiked around a bit at the top of the gondola. The views were amazing! As far as we could see in every direction were the snow-capped peaks of other mountains in the Fitzsimmons Range of the Coast Mountains.







Whistler is co-hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics with Vancouver. The skiing and other alpine events will take place in Whistler. The Inushuk (the Inuit term for a stone sculpture in the shape of a human - the Native People built Inushuks both as a sign of safe passage and of welcome) that stands on Whistler Mountain has become a symbol of the 2010 games.







There was still plenty of snow on the mountain in the middle of July.







Enough, even, for a few snowballs!







The snow on Whistler Mountain will just last through the summer, but is melting at quite a pace! Little rivulets run from all the snowpacks and run together into bright blue streams and mountain rivers. Lakes and ponds dot the landscape. In the photo below, there's a lake lurking underneath the snow pack.






Karl and I hiked for an hour or so before we headed back down the mountain again to poke around in the village shopping and eating ice cream before it was time to meet up with Ken and Geoff again.




JV