Saturday, 2nd June
We took the 11am Greyhound bus to Whistler Village via the Sea to Sky Highway. We reached there at about 1.30pm. At the visitor information centre, we booked the ZipTrek activity which cost CAD 99 each. Yep, its costly, but then again almost all the activities cost about the same price. What the heck, we decided, we came here to enjoy ourselves, so we just splurged!! Due to time constraint, we could only sign up for ZipTrek and not dog sledding. Then we got tickets for the gondola and chairlift rides which will bring us up Blackcomb mountain. FYI, there are mountains at Whistler village; Whistler & Blackcomb. Whistler mountain was closed in April and only Blackcomb mountain is open for winter acitivites (until 3rd June, then its closed!!). This is why we had wanted to go Whistler by 3rd June and boy, we’re glad we did!!
So, up the gondola we went. Nothing exciting, as it was slow – though the slopes of the mountains were staring in our faces. Then after the gondola, we gotta take the chairlifts to go further up the mountain. Though named the Excelerator, it doesn’t live up the speed its name indicates. Its the route down the machines that gives the marvellous views.
So after 25 mins of ride, we reached the top of the Blackcomb – not the peak though cos that’s for skiers. As skiing is still going on (for intermediate and above), we were limited to where we could walk about. So, snow is not fluffy….more like ice kachang…but we were still in awe of it, cos its made by Mother Nature. Walking on snow is fun! It can be slippery, so we had near slips. Finally, we were able to throw snowballs at each other (that’s our dreams come true)! It can be painful esp if the snowballs were tightly compacted. But it gets too cold to keep touching the snow continuously. And oh, from the photos, you can tell that its not very cold even high up at the mountain. Perhaps its because the sun is really strong (we returned home with slightly burned noses). And sunglasses is a must…to protect eyes from the sunrays reflecting from the snow. So though it wasn’t freezing, when the wind blows, it feels really cool.
The mountain was picturesque!! The views were astounding. Standing on the mountain, looking up the blue sky, snow covered slopes and staring down at the steepness of the slopes, you can’t help but feel small and insignificant. And we felt honoured to be able to take in all these views that nature has to offer. I can’t help but hope that such awe-inspiring views can be preserved for all eternity and not be damaged by human’s earth-damaging acts. Of course, we hoped that the mountains will stay unchanged so that when (that’s a definite) we come back again, we can admire all that we’ve seen today. So that was the wish of most people here. In fact, in B.C, everyone seems to be environment friendly.
The rides close at 4pm. We enjoyed the snow so much we didn’t want to go for the ZipTrek we signed up. We were supposed to report at 4.05pm. We had decided to forgo the ZipTrek. When we reached ground level, it was about 4.25pm and we headed to the centre to cancel our scheduled activity. BUT, they said there was a 24 hr cancellation policy, so we had no choice but to go since they had our credit card details.
The ZipTrek is what we call Flying Fox. We went into the mountain to zip around. The tour we signed up for has 4 zips. The zips were located mainly above the Fitzsimmons River. The longest zip was 1100 meters while the highest zip was 150 feet above ground. It wasn’t scary esp when you see the beautiful lanscape and feel the cool winds on your face. So, we had, what the locals would say, good times.
