Whistler

My last night in Seattle, a Saturday night, was meant to be spent going out and enjoying the vibrant nightlife downtown Seattle has to offer. I met some people to go out with but it wasn't to be, because the 31 year old American had lost his ID (they check everyone for ID), an Aussie girl was being stalked by some local gangs and was too afraid to go out,and there were some 19 year olds, which of course in the USA is underage. So we stayed an partied in the hostel.

The Green Tortoise Hostel in Seattle is one of the best places I've ever stayed in. Spotless showers are a luxury when you're hosteling it. Seattle was meant to be a pass-through city for me, but it turns out to be a really interesting place, with heaps to do, so I wish I had arranged to stay longer. But how could I be sad to leave when I was heading on to Whistler Village, British Columbia, to ski North America's premier ski resort, Whistler Blackcomb.

The six or seven hours from Seattle to Whistler went surprisingly quickly, thanks to catching up on sleep, chatting to fellow Aussies from the hostel and a border crossing from the USA. The US customs officials (with guns, of course) were surprisingly full on coming out of the US, asking all sorts of questions of most of the people on the bus. But they mainly picked on the black man. His bag was the only one they searched, asking “do you have any drugs in here?” as they opened it.

The service from Seattle terminated in Vancouver, where I had to change to another bus. A good American bloke which some girls from my hostel and I met on the bus was kind enough to offer us some of the cheap duty free beers he bought on the border which we subtly (ok, maybe not so subtly) drank in the Vancouver train station McDonald's. He was headed to Whistler as well, so gave me some tips on the way up as well as an initial tour on arrival. The trip up itself was great, with amazing views of lakes and snow-capped mountains all the way up!

When I arrived I met up with my friends Amanda and Jayson, who had flown to British Columbia from London to go skiing.

Together we had booked a small townhouse apartment, complete with 2 balconies overlooking snowy mountain ranges, one with a hot tub!

The week was spent skiing the vast terrain of the dual Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains. Each mountain feels like its 4 times the size of Mount Hotham (for those Aussie skiers), and there's 2 of them!

One of the highlights was skiing the run which will be the Men's downhill race run for the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Winter Olympics.

The night life in the Village was surprisingly quiet, probably due to the fact it was the end of the season. This time of the year normally brings little snow, but we were lucky as the mountain still had excellent snow cover (2.6 metres). We were usually so exhausted after a day of skiing the vast terrain though, that we were happy to have some drinks in our private hot-tub instead of hitting the town every night.

During my last 2 days on the mountain we got to sample the World Ski and Snowboard Festival in the village, which involved all sorts of festivities including band performances on big stages with the snowy mountains as a backdrop.

Today it was time to depart Whistler. I spent the morning hanging out in the Village, enjoying some really warm weather (sunny T-shirt weather) and checking out the goings-on of the festival. Then caught the greyhound back to Vancouver for the next set of Canadian adventures!