Sick, sick, sick powder day

Oh my god we just had the most amazing day's riding, and now I'm soooo exhausted. This morning I managed to get out at 9, which is an accomplishment, and we went hiking into the backcountry. In the morning we went up to blackcomb glacier, took the t-bar to the top, walked up onto the glacier and along the ridge, traversed straight right across to the far side and then walked straight uphill to the far side of blackcomb peak. From that hike you can either loop round to the left and end up coming back down onto blackcomb glacier or go the way that we did and end up on the far side of lakeside bowl and eventually come back out at the seventh heaven chair.
The hike was absolutely killer, like walking up a blue run except in deep snow, althought fortunately the previous hikers' footprints had made it somewhat easier than it would have been if we were the first people up there. We had to take a few breaks even though it was only a 30 minute or so walk. It was quite a feeling of satisfaction when we got to the top though! Plus the views from the top were amazing, it was wicked to see everything from a different angle to how you usually see it from the pistes! Check the photos again, I took a bunch and some are quite impressive.
Anyway, the first run down we traversed quite a long way along the far side of the bowl then dropped into the trees quite a way over. The powder in the trees was beautiful, although at the top it had gone slightly crusty. I watched Nicolas, our French tour guide for the day, stack it into a tree and get buried up to the shoulders too, which was funny. Fortunately we all managed to make it back to the piste ok, although we were a bit worried about Pete, who managed to go down past the "way out" signs, which to be fair were tiny and inconspicuous, then hiked maybe 100m across the mountain to get back to the bottom of the piste!! After that ordeal everyone was ready for some lunch but we had only 10 minutes to get from the top of 7th heaven to the glacier creek restaurant, so we hammered it straight down there, which froze our faces!
After a baked potato for lunch we headed back to the glacier and did the same hike again... We lost Nobuko though because she fell off the t-bar three times, much to my amusement - the third time I saw her and another guy going ass over tit down the bank to the right of the lift line. In the afternoon the sun had come out and it was incredibly hot walking up that hill carrying all our stuff. Again it was totally worth it though, the second run down through the bowl was absolutely incredible - we took a line further to the right and were carving out huge sweeping turns through untouched snow. On the way down through the trees I took a rather extreme line though which was pretty, er, difficult :) fortunately me & Tim managed to find our way back to civilization just in time.
After we'd done that run me & Tim were thinking of going over to Whistler and hiking flute bowl but our legs said, "absolutely not", so instead we went for one more run top to bottom via crystal chair and jersey cream and headed to the longhorn for a couple of pitchers and some mulled wine :) awwwwwwwwwwwwesome day!!! Hopefully it's going to snow again tonight but there's a chance the freezing level could be at 3000m, which could be slightly problematic!!

Bungeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

This Monday I did a bungy jump!! It had to be done because we had the opportunity to go for only $20 (I think normally it's $45 or $50), because we had some money to spend on an event for all the bussing staff at work. I think there was about 30 people who went all in.
It was actually scarier than I was expecting, although I wasn't scared before I jumped, as obviously I'm an adrenaline junkie ;) because about half way down the jump I started thinking, "shit I'm not stopping and I'm falling a long way"! I think everyone felt the same about it to be honest. One girl Nobuko had to be pushed off the platform, which was pretty funny, prompting someone to shout, "sorry, no refunds", lol.
There's a video of me doing the jump which Yuki took on her video camera too, which is absolutely comedy cuz it looks like I'm a puppet on a string, I'll try and stick a link up for it if I get it from her!
Unfortunately the riding that day wasn't as great as I was hoping because my option board seems to be too stiff for me and I was having trouble fighting with it that day which crippled my feet :/ but I'm going to fiddle with my setup and see if that improves the situation. Also we had to get off the mountain early cuz we had to go get the bus to the bungy place at 4.30!

Birthday and last week’s events

Just a few notes about what’s been going on..
Last week I went down to Vancouver with Yukiko and we stayed in the Pan Pacific hotel (vancouver.panpacific.com) which was a very nice place!. We got upgraded to a harbour view room too, I got some pix of the view that I’ll stick on the net soon. While we were in Van we spent most of the time shopping (for my birthday pressie :o) which I felt kinda bad about, especially cuz I’m so picky.. Still, we managed to find a t-shirt and a pair of skate shoes eventually (mwah). I was actually quite shocked because she said if she was working in a proper job she would spend like £250 on someone for their birthday, which is unprecedented to me being the pauper and skinflint that I am :)
We went to a thai restaurant called ‘Simply Thai’ for dinner that night (you can see it at www.simplythairestaurant.com) which was good but still not as good as the Siam Smile in Cheltenham! Also we were given bad directions by the bus driver so we were about 30 or 40 minutes late and walked a long way in the wrong direction… muppet.
So that was Monday and Tuesday, on Wednesday I didn’t really do anything because the working Sunday then walking round for two days had tired me out cuz I guess I was still getting over being ill. Then on Thursday I was supposed to go on an all mountain pub crawl cuz it was another of my friend’s birthdays (Bobby Dazzler) on the same day, but I ended up getting out of bed at 2pm then going for a late lunch so I only made it out for 6 o’clock! We ended up going to Merlins then Crystal Lounge then Tommy Africas, although some of the contingent went to Moe Joe’s and I think we were being separatist, but it was a really good night, I broke out the pink wig again and a bunch of the guys were in one piece ski suits, check the pics out :)
On Friday, or maybe Thursday night, it actually started dumping snow. Then it continued to snow until Sunday night!! I think we had about 75cms which has made this week a much more inviting prospect :)
On Sunday night I went out again for my birthday, because some people had complained about my lack of informing everyone (mainly because I couldn’t be arsed to phone loads of people on Wednesday), so yeah I said we’d go out again. Unfortunately because it coincided with the snowfall, which has been such a rarity, no-one was really up for going out on a massive bender so it ended up just being some drinks at the longhorn, which has its locals night on a Sunday. So that was the extent of my birthday celebrations this year! Although I did get a birthday cake this Wednesday (a week later!).

Small compensation

One of the good things about being here is that you get views like this one - this was taken over Alta Lake as we made our way to Rainbow Park on Thursday. By the way, yes there should be snow on the trees :)

The trip to Rainbow Park was scary because the light was just fading and we were the only people walking towards it! Everyone else was going the other way, and the bears are waking up again...

Future

Recently I've started thinking about where I'm going after here, most of my plans depend on finances.. not good news.
At the moment people seem to be leaving here in droves. Last Friday Saturday Sunday I mentioned there were 3 leaving parties in succession, 2 people from work and my housemate, Kim. So far I don't think anyone's left this week, but it does seem like there's always a leaving party going on.

I'm almost certain that I'm going to go down to Vancouver after finishing here (our lease expires on the 27th April), but it depends on me finding a job quickly as I don't have money to go out partying at the moment! I'm not sure if I'm going to go down with anyone either, but if I do go down on my own then it'll be hassle trying to find a house..

Of course my original plan was to go from here to Vancouver then Toronto then go travelling to some places in the states, but that was when I thought I had a grand stashed away for that which has long since been cut into, baaaaaaah.

I'll keep things posted, anyway.

Worst season ever.

Well I think it's become official that this is is Whistler's worst ever season. That is - since the resort opening at the start of the 70s. I can't help but feel a little bitter that it's been like this the year I came, but I guess everyone else who's here is in the same boat, or state of discontent. I actually believe that I have a curse on the snow, everywhere I've been in the past 5 years has been the same, yet I refuse to attribute the lack of snow to the phenomenon that is global warming like many others are willing to do because other places are getting loads of snow. Ironically, one of the reasons I came here is because of the recent unreliability of snow in the Alps... Ha. Haha. Hahahahaha...

Anyway we're still trying to make the best of it - my housemates informed me that it was actually pretty fun yesterday in the Spring conditions (that is, slush everywhere), but to me that's not really ideal, plus I expect you can't ski to the bottom any more because it was raining top to bottom the past couple of days. I can't check the riding out myself at the moment either because I've been ill for the past week :( I've spent nearly all this past week sitting around the house with the occasional trip into the village, I'm going to go back to the doctor's today in fact because I'm still running a temperature.. I had to phone in sick to work last week (oh no!) which means I am actually only going to get paid for one day's work this fortnight :)

On that note, on the Sunday morning when I rang in my supervisor actually questioned whether I was ill or not because the previous night I'd had to go and see my friend who was leaving for Korea the next day. One of the mindless lead hands was there too and he had obviously gone back to him the next day and said I'd seemed fine, when in fact I'd rung the guy who was leaving and said I wasn't going to make it because I was sick, but he pleaded with me to come so against my better judgement I decided to drop by for an hour.. I was pretty angry about the whole thing and was going to phone the manager to make a complaint but I thought there would be no way they'd do anything about it so didn't bother >:( the Roundhouse is a joke. If I were to do another season I'd definitely want to save up beforehand so I didn't have to work. I mean it's novel working on the mountain and you have beautiful views out of the window that you couldn't get nearly anywhere else etc etc, but when you have such muppets in charge and get paid such a mockery of a wage it really doesn't seem worthwhile. At the same time I was thinking that maybe if the snow was good then the atmosphere both at work and in the village in general would be that much better that it would all be ok, but it's not, so it's not, if you know what I mean :) oh well. It's still nice to be surrounded by the mountains and the weather has been very nice and mild recently ;) in fact so much so that I'm expecting to run into a bear sometime soon!

Yeeeeoooowwwww

Arghhhhh haven't updated for ages again

Most significant news is that my family came out to visit last week, they stayed in a skiworld chalet (very authentic) down in Brio - just the other side of the village centre to me. Unfortunately they had all their meals provided for them at the chalet as I was hoping to be treated to a week of fine dining :) however on my Dad's birthday on the 22nd we went to a restaurant called Araxi, which is supposed to be the best restaurant in Whistler, and it was sooooooo gooooooooooooooooooooooood.... It's just a shame the bill was almost equivalent to two weeks' worth of paycheque, so I don't think I'll be going back in a hurry!! Not that I had to pay of course.. On the next day I took my Mum & sis down to Vancouver for a whirlwind tour, we hired a car which I got to drive, yayurh. It was f**king weird to be driving on the right hand side of the road!!! Plus the road from Whistler to Vancouver doesn't have cats eyes at the edge of the road, so it was pretty difficult to see where we were going when there was oncoming traffic in the dark on the way home, not the most fun in the world. Also the car was an American piece of trash - a Pontiac sunfire - avoid. Still, it was great fun to drive again after so long!! I miss my civic :(
On the last day I took my Dad & sis out for a whole mountain exploration, we covered so much ground!! I think everyone was absolutely shattered at the end of the day, well maybe except for this marine guy in the same chalet who came too :)

I felt a bit bad for my folks because the snow situation wasn't great (tired of hearing that yet?) but at least it was nice and sunny all week and the snow condition actually improved throughout the week, paradoxically. It actually snowed a little bit this week as you may have gathered from my previous post but that only amounted to about 10cm and now it's set to get warmer again for the immediate future.. We're thinking that maybe the snow won't even last til the end of the season (due April 17th) unless it dumps again soon. As you can imagine I'm a bit bitter that it's turned out like this the one year that I chose to come, but what the hey we can but make the best of it. On Tuesday & Wednesday this week we had a couple of pretty good powder days, Tuesday we hit Blackcomb glacier with a posse of about 10 people from work, we went to check out the ice caves too which were pretty impressive!! Wednesday we went in one of the bowls on Whistler that I hadn't been in before so that was cool to check out a new place, although it was a bit disconcerting the number of 'cliff' signs that there were dotted about the place :)

Related to boarding - I bought 2 new snowboards!!! >:) And no, I'm not rolling in it, in fact I am very poor! One of them is an Option Makinen 163.5, which is super stiff, kinda like my old board except more directional and with a deeper sidecut for better transition. I have only ridden it twice on ice though so hasn't been much fun so far! The other board is a Sapient PNB1 157, which is a twintip freestyle board and a bit softer. In fact I can't believe how fast you can go on it and still feel safe considering the flex of the board. The Sapient is awesome, it's so fast and fun plus it has bright pink sidewalls (which match my new bright pink goggles :D) and says kickass karaoke on it, what more could one want? First time I took it out though it tried to kill me by doing what I've since checked out to be a 25ft jump over the corner of 2 pistes, I damn near landed it as well, although the resulting stack inspired concerned onlookers to come and ask if I was ok afterwards, lol. Luckily it didn't hurt at all, in fact I hurt myself far more on Tuesday by landing on my MP3 player on hardpack whilst messing about going really slowly. Fun and games.

On the social scene I still haven't been going out that much because I keep feeling ill, but I went out a couple times when my family were here cuz my sis wanted to! We did bills on Wednesday, dropping about $130 on the bar between us I reckon and then Moe Joe's on Saturday, where Becky wussed out at 11.15 after I'd invited a bunch of people out :) Beck you missed Tim confessing his love for you on Friday night, in fact he was begging for a phone number - you shouldn't lead people on like that ;)
Also there was another sushi party on Monday just gone at Yukiko's house, we had pretty much the same crowd as last time but the food was even better and we (or should that be 'I') drunk too much sake :p don't think that did too much to help my cold.

I had some bad news yesterday because my Dad is quite ill with mumps and also I was in contact with him whilst he would have been contagious, so hopefully I won't catch it too!! I was advised to go to the doctor's though to see if I could get any booster or similar, and while I was there I was telling him about my general state of health recently and have been told to take a week course of antibiotics and take a couple days off work! So today I'm resting up again, having not been out boarding yesterday due to feeling crap too. I actually feel quite a bit better today but maybe I'll wait til Sunday to go back to work to make sure all's well. Also we're supposed to be having a leaving party tonight for my housemate Kim, who is going home on Sunday, but I haven't seen her for ages so not too sure what the score is with that!!

Next week I'm going down to Vancouver with Yuki for a couple days to have a wander round the shops and stuff, we're staying in quite a nice hotel so am defo looking forward :) also the week after that I'm hoping to go down to Mammoth in California to board on some real snow for a couple days - California is killing it this year, goddammit, so if that materialises then that'll be something else to look forward to as well!! Still, am keeping hope alive that the conditions here are going to be very good at some point before the end of the season.. It's strange that we actually *need* things to look forward to, because I didn't envisage ever having to stay motivated when living in a ski resort where you get to go skiing every day.. The morale at work is hitting rock bottom though. I think pretty much everyone has had enough of the place, which makes for some quite entertaining conversation, especially my friend Eamon who is totally hippy like fight the power/against the system :) an outburst last Sunday about how the lead hands are just tools of the Intrawest machine invoked the people concerned to take him aside and ask if he was having some kind of emotional breakdown lol.

Anyway! The onset of rambling tells me that it's time to end. Hope all who are reading are well :)

Abrasão, X

!!?

Hey there's some white stuff coming out of the sky.. Does anyone know what it is?!