As you know, the morning started off with a bit of sleep recovery from the night before, but even though I'd only had a couple of hours sleep, by 9:30, I was up and readying myself for another day on the slopes - it was just so sunny, so glorious, I just couldnt' help myself.
When I got to the mountain, I was wondering what all the Crew was doing sitting around at the base, looking up. It turned out that the Creekside Gondola was closed because the TV towers, which had been in place at the higher elevations for the downhill runs, were being heli-lifted to lower positions in readiness for the Slalom races. Now, it just wouldn't be good Whistler Olympics press to have a helicopter drop a TV tower onto a gondola with passengers, so they shut it down entirely.
I killed some time having lunch, then bussed it over to the Village base to upload from there.
For those of you who don't know, Whistler Resort actually boasts two mountains: Blackcomb and Whistler. There is a Peak to Peak Gondola which rides suspension wires between the two peaks of the two mountains. Today I rode the Peak to Peak (it would have been a waste to do so in the fog/cloud other days) and skied Blackcomb. There's a chair called "7th Heaven", and t-shirts are sold that say "Go to Heaven - Ski Like Hell!". So hard to focus on skiing there, with the rocky walls rising above you, drop offs on the side of your ski path, and not a tree in sight to block your vision until you descend to lower elevations - just glorious.
Hey Siobhan - remember you warned me not to go "off piste"? And I said that you had no worries? Well, I may have changed my tune on that front somewhat. I'm not going way out of bounds or anything, but there's tonnes of terrain outside the trail markers, and although I can make a real mess of my technique when I go there as these areas aren't groomed, it's a lot of fun. This is where I took my ONE fall of the trip so far - but the view was so amazing at that spot, in that moment, that I popped off my skis, and must have sat there for a half hour just appreciating the gift of what lay before my eyes. I was in awe.
A few more runs, and I was done for the day - a short one, but a good one, for sure.
Out for dinner with all of the Gate Judge's Crew tonight - Boston Pizza. I think I was starting to get sick this day, because I was so tired (oh, could it have been the 2 or 3 hours sleep I had last night?), so made my way home at a decent time - you see Claire? I can go a night without the Weasel House!
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