Floating in the ether, Whistler

Whistler Day 5 – The Bane of My Existence

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I talked about White Out conditions on Day 3. Those conditions were a joke compared to Friday’s outing. Friday we did Fresh Tracks which is breakfast at the Roundhouse Lodge on Whistler and first access to the mountain before opening to the public. It was snowing so we were looking for a good time. It was puking snow on the mountain all day. The freeze line was kinda high so at one point we were skiing in rain. It was awful returning to the freeze line because then you’d get cold again.

The peak was insane. 60 – 80 km/hr winds and absolutely zero visibility. I wanted to take a picture of what I saw but it would be the same as posting an image of a white square. All you saw was white, there was no way to determine which way was up or down. Gravity sometimes helped and other times the winds were pushing you so much you just prayed there was no cliffs around to fall off of. There was a reason why the Experts light was flashing at the bottom of the Peak Express chair.

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Eric and I are crazy. We hit the peak 4 or 5 times that day. Each time the weather got more and more extreme. The liftie must have been wondering about us, because we were some of the few people repeating their trips to the peak. We skied West Bowl in the mess and couldn’t see a damn thing. The snow was great there though. We also tried looking for Bagel Bowl but it was impossible. My hands were getting cold and my will to take this punishment was waning. So finally I said, I can’t do this peak shit anymore. Eric replies, Okay lets got up to peak (the lift line was zero) and hit Harmony chair. Stupid me said Okay. The route to get to Harmony from the peak of Whistler was disgusting. There were drifts everywhere so you would get stuck. The wind was so cold and I was screaming my head off the whole time. I couldn’t see Eric at all and when we did find each other, we said forget Harmony and lets get the hell out of here. The peak was the bane of my existence and I was done with the mountain. Nothing sucks the will to ski from me, but this storm had won. Snow or no snow. It’s a good thing we didn’t goto Harmony chair because they had closed it. We were the last people on peak too because they closed it also. That’s mountain weather for you.

I’m sure you are wondering about some of these runs I’ve taken so here is a link to a pdf mountain map and an interactive map. I’ll do a list of all my runs in the Day 6 post.

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Anita Clarke is an Engineering Storyteller and the founder of the fashion blog “I want – I got.” She was one of the first and most prominent online fashion writers in Toronto and Canada.