Day 21 - Time to rip, Games are gone

It's a good thing that I essentially had to wait 3 weeks to start skiing here. My legs are perfectly conditioned now, after spending 20 of the last 21 days on my skiis on the hill. Though I haven't been actually 'skiing' thoses days (except 2 of them), the course work that I have been performing has my legs and body in a great postion to ski the whole mountain.

I caught the 7:10am bus from Pemberton and met a fellow named Norm from Collingwood Ontario. He is here visiting family and was alone heading to the hill. We decided to ski together and we both were at the top of the Wistler Village gondola this morning by 8:20am. Yes, from my door in Pemberton to the top of Whistler only took 1hr 10 minutes. A sure sign the the Olympics has left Whistler. After taking 3 cruisers down the softest, untracked cordory I've ever skied under the Emerald chair, we had a quick pit stop and headed for Harmony chair. I've completely fallen in love with this chair. The terrain it serves and the quickness of the ride up is truly awesome. Norm never did tell me his age, but he did tell me his wife was born in 1932, so I'm thinking he is around 80. This is not a problem when skiing Harmony chair. We would ride the lift together and then meet up at one of the various places the cruiser runs crossed the fall-line. Sometimes this was all the way back at the lift, since I was more interested in following the fall-line today!

We skied this lift all morning and headed of to meet Mel, Norm's friend from Pemberton for lunch. Mel spends alot of his time para-gliding all over the world. He told us about his trip to Nepal where you can soar in the updrafts all over the mountains. He and some of his friends do this kind of thing for kicks. He once had to land his kite in a remote area where he traded a Canadian t-shirt for a lift to the bus to get back to his group, somewhere high up above Nepal. Facinating adventures this guy has had. After lunch, we rode the Peak chair, but it was so windy at the top, we decided that it would be best just to head back to the Harmony chair, which you an do from the Peak via a 4-5 mile long run. We spent the entire afternoon at Harmony before departing in our separate ways.

Here is a list, in no particular order of the run's I skied today: Burnt Stew Trail/Bowl, Sun Bowl, Harmony Ridge, Kaleidoscope, Low Roll, Gun Barrels, Little Whistler, Camel Back, Boomer Bowl, Back Bowl, G.S. , Krummholz and McConkey's. This lift sweeps you back up so fast you can cover the whole Harmony area in one day.

I plan to spend tomorrow at Blackcomb. I've never really had a good look at some of the stuff up around Blackcomb and Horstman Glaciers and think it's about time that I did. I may even venture up 'Spanky's Ladder' for some of the Blackcomb bowls like: Ruby, Garnet, Diamond and Sapphire. Becuase it requires riding 2 or more lifts to get back up to this area, my runs will be more limited than they were today. If that doesn't work out, maybe Symphony chair on Whislter will be open and I can Peak to Peak it over there. Wommie says he might ski this Wednesday, which will be nice since he knows these mountains as well as anyone out here. I'm trying hard not to think about packing up a leaving in a few days, since the fun is just starting.