Well, I really should be doing work, but I’m having a severe crisis of concentration. So, I guess I’ll post a little update here since I’ve been meaning to anyway.
I just got back from an amazing snowboarding trip to Whistler, Canada. Whistler is actually technically Whistler Blackcomb. It’s a ski resort with two mountains (both huge). Whistler is a mountain, and Blackcomb is a glacier. Both have incredible terrain and ski runs. If you started at the top, I believe it would take you about a half hour – 40 minutes to make it all the way to the bottom. I guess if you were really fast you could do it in less time, but for normal people it takes a LONG time to get all the way down! Usually you don’t do that though, you just go to one section of the mountain and stay there for a bit.
I went with my friends Val and Lori, and we stayed at Barb’s apartment. Barb is our friend who moved from San Diego to Whistler this past summer. She let us stay at her apartment for free, which was awesome! It was close quarters but we had fun cooking dinners and breakfasts, and having chocolate fondue.
We went for New Year’s, and on New Year’s day we got a foot of fresh powder. It was snowing nonstop for three days!
My favorite session on the mountain was when Barb took us to the alpine area called 7th Heaven. It starts above the treeline and then opens up into a sloping meadow of open runs and copses of trees. We went through a few stands of trees which was challenging. Tree riding means trying to find a path between the trunks and navigating the powder in between. Often there are already gouges in the snow from others going through the trees, so that adds to the difficulty. We went through a few narrow keyholes where it was basically only as wide as my board and tree trunks were whizzing by inches from my head. (Yes, I do wear a helmet)
At The Entrance To The Whistler Olympic Park (L to R: Myself, Barb, Lori, and Val)
The Winter Olympics are going to take place in Vancouver and Whistler this year, so we got to take in all the improvements and construction going in to the preparation for the games. Unfortunately we couldn’t really see the Whistler Olympic park because they had shut it down for security measures. It’s kind of sad that the world is like that now, but such is life I guess.
L to R, Me, Lori, Val - Riding the lift
Winter Wonderland on Blackcomb
I can’t wait to go back! I had a great time.
The only problem I had during the trip is that Lori unfortunately got a cold the night before we left, and both Barb and I caught it. So I’m sick yet again!! Fortunately it wasn’t bad enough to stop me from snowboarding. It was just annoying that my nose was running all the time.
Actually, I felt *great* when I was on the hill, in terms of my body. I didn’t even get that sore! Last year when I went to Whistler I got so incredibly sore that I couldn’t move. I don’t know if it’s because we were doing shorter days or what, but my legs felt pretty strong the whole time. Maybe my snowboarding technique is just better so that I put less strain on my muscles. Who knows!
Hopefully we’ll take a few more boarding trips this Winter. Val is talking about going to Mammoth, and it sounds really fun. It’s about 6-7 hours north of San Diego, so it’s a bit of a drive, but I was looking at their website and the mountain looks huge.
I was telling my friends that after officially learning the basics of how to snowboard over the course of 3 trips to Vermont during High School, I pretty much perfected my snowboarding technique on the most dinky little hills in Michigan. Mt. Brighton was only about 20 minutes away from the U of M, so it was a great place to go just to work on technique and get my kicks for an afternoon. The only thing is – Mt. Brighton is a converted landfill (aka garbage dump). It is TINY. The hill itself is only like 230ft. high! Let’s just say that it has made me truly appreciate going to a real mountain 
I mean, Whistler makes Brighton look like a speck of dust.
Tiny Mt. Brighton