Whistler - The biggest ski resort in North America

Arriving at whistler after a beautiful drive from Vancouver, the ground was covered in snow in the village and light snow was falling. It was a picturesque place.
Instantly we fell in love with the place, the ski village architecture, snow covered roofs, Christmas decorations and every thing a short walk from our rented "condo".

With a day off before skiing we explored the village, got our gear ready for the snow, shopped for food and acquainted ourselves with the area. The place was amazing and had a great feel about it, already we want to come back and work a winter here.

Skiing.
With our gear rented and a 12 day pass, we were pumped when we finally headed up the slopes. However we were not very sure what to expect and having been 5 years since either of skied, we were a little cautious.
 With a tour from a friendly volunteer mountain host, we found the nice parts of the mountain and our memory of how to ski (and how much it hurts at first) came back. Unlike a lot of the peaks in Aus, there are green runs all the way from the peak to the village.

Once the top opened up, we headed up. The view was astounding. No photos can justify the view of the surrounding peaks, all covered in snow, as far as the eye can reach. The colour slowly changing from white to green as you look down each mountain to the valley some 2kms below. The peak on whistler was at 7200ft and we regularly skied a run from there to the village - a drop of 5000 ear popping feet. The amount of runs and terrain was on a scale hard to fathom. Skiing from the peak to the village non stop at a fast pace would take us over 30mins.
I (Adam) took a few days off the skiis to give snowboarding another try. It was difficult at first, unfortunately it doesn't translate from surfing at all. The weighting on your feet is different and takes some time to grasp. After a lesson though it all came back to me and I was carving down the mountain with more speed and confidence than ever. We even hit a few blue runs on my third day of snow boarding ever. I was happy with my progress and switched back to the skis for some more speed and to keep up with Corinne, who was now powering along faster then ever. After 4 more days on ski's then me I had to work hard to keep up with her. We had many races down hills and along flats to the lifts, one incident ended with her skiing onto the pavers at the village just to beat me. (Cos: Which i did!) How one of us didn't wipe out at high speed, I don't know.

The peak dude: A Native American symbol that points the way

We received fresh snow most days and even found some areas with no tracks to try our hand in some powder. We managed to skip the one day of heavy rain and hit the slopes again for fresh powder on our last day. Conditions were perfect, 10cm of snow in the early morning and still falling, the peaks open after avalanche bombing and the weekend crowds had disappeared. We headed up first lift and took the last lift to the peak at the end of the day, making the most of it and exhausting ourselves in the process.

This section of the trip definitely gets a 10/10. The village was fantastic, great cheap food (Avalanche pizza, Beef and Blue cheese best ever) and a great vibe, the skiing was amazing and the weather was pretty good to us.



Cos vs the giant avalanche pizza

 It is a trip definitely worth repeating, and no doubt we will.

Next up - Some news!!!!