5 full days of skiing @ Whistler

Hi everyone,

OK for those who bother checking this, sorry I haven't updated it sooner... I had a few midterms last week, and since Friday I've been skiing every day @ Whistler! Anyway I have a few photos from Whistler to put up now - the views were amazing and the weather fantastic (although still not enough snow!) so enjoy....

Oh and OK, I'll put the captions underneath the photos now =P

Day 1


Here I am looking to the Whistler Mtn peak from the top of the Big Red lift


Rina looking down into the valley from the same place


The Roundhouse at the top of the Whistler Gondola. It takes around 30 minutes to get up here (this place is HUGE!) and as season pass holders we get 50% off all the food!


Looking over to Blackcomb Mtn from the Roundhouse


Traversing along the green runs from the Roundhouse down. I skiid with Rina on the first day so we stuck to the easy stuff


Again looking down into the valley...


The traversing here is great, always surrounded by trees on the lower mountain - although a bit too flat in parts


Having lunch @ the Roundhouse outdoors - what a day!


Top of the Harmony chairlift at Little Whistler Peak


Skiing down the Burnt Stew Trail from Little peak


View down from the Burnt Stew Trail


Same again

Day 2


The next morning - 4cm of snow overnight! this is looking down the road from the UBC lodge where we stayed... the place is kinda a hole, the beds are uncomfortable and its noisy and light, but hey - $18 a night is pretty cheap


FOG!! Skiing through this really sux - can't see a thing


View from the lift going up


OK this is amazing, when you go up the lift you literally go through the clouds and all you can see below you is a blanket of cloud - one of the most amazing things ever


Another view of the new snow from the lift


Top of the t-bars on Whistler - couldn't go down the blue run because they were training for the Olympics (Vancouver 2010)


Going up the Peak lift on Whistler


Whistler PEAK!! Very cold up here


Looking down from the peak....


Valley view from peak

Day 5

OK so no photos on day 3 or 4, but these nights I stayed at the Fireside lodge - only $30 a night for the luxury of dark rooms, a comfortable bed and quiet before midnight


Looking down the Saddle from Whistler peak


Same...


I skiid with Joseph, one of the Mexicans on day 5 - the others were too slow! We didn't shy away from trying to kill ourselves either - this was a black run down from the peak






I don't really know where the above 3 are from, I know its looking down Whistler, I know the runs were hard (tried a double black here too) and we got extremely sore feet coming down here


After exploring Whistler for almost 4 days we decided Blackcomb might be a goer, this is a view down from the Excelerator lift from the base, you can see what kinda bad season they are having!


Joseph the mexican dude...hardcore boarder!


Our most ambitious run yet, and probably one of the hardest at the whole resort - this double black bowl was icey, extremely steep but heck...




This run is called "spanky's ladder"


This is the view from the top of the Jersey Cream bowl on Blackcomb


"Proposal Point" lol....


Are we crazy?????


After this we checked out the Nintendo terrain parks, tried some jumps, hurt our asses bigtime, then Joseph tried out the half pipe....

OK so that's it for the Whistler/Blackcomb pictures. I was only meant to go up for 3 days but it turned into 5, I couldn't go home! Have definitely improved my skiing a lot.

Some goings on before midterms
So you would think on the weekend before midterms I would be studying.... but no, on Friday night there was a massive party at Fairview, and then we woke up the next morning to try to buy U2 tickets at 9.30am. Thought we missed out but then a few days later I got an email telling me that I had gotten 8 tickets, 25 rows back, right in front of the stage!! I don't even like U2 that much but everyone else is so excited, and it made the front page of the paper that they sold out so quick, so I feel obliged to be excited as well...

Anyway, so after we got the tickets, we're sitting around watching soccer and at around 2pm we decided it would be a good time to start playing a Mexican shot game...so between about 10 ppl we finished off close to 5 bottles of spirits, got extremely drunk and took lots of photos... all of which are too unsuitable to put on the web...sorry!

OK that's all. Cyas

Nick

Nude beach!

So, I met these 2 Canadian girls at the Whistler lodge a couple of weekends ago, Steph and Tina... anywho, turns out Steph is a German genius and had a spare copy of the german textbook I was too cheap to buy. So we met today for a coffee and so I could grab the book, at the time I had every intention of going to german class at 4... but the sun was out (yes thats twice in a week!) and I had yet to visit the famous beach just off UBC, so we decided to skip class and take a walk down there. Grabbed my camera so heres some photos

Some campus shots...

Found a couple of interesting buildings on campus on the way... this is the First Nations (Aborigines) house of learning:



The Museum of Anthropology:



...and the totem poles, a big North American Indian thing, just outside the museum...



...a squirrel, you see these wandering round all the time! one even came into rinas house at fairview while we were doing groupwork....



The rosegarden at the northernmost tip of campus, no roses yet!



The Chan centre for Performing Arts (the cool round building on the left, apparently it has great acoustics) and the law building on the right you can see as well...



...a 'monkey tree' (whatever that is - steph and tina found it interesting!)





...this thing you stand on in the main mall, its hard to describe but when you stand up on it and speak your voice gets a weird echo... not sure what causes it, any suggestions?



...and another view of the Gage apartments, the complex where I live (mine is the South tower, the one on the right of this photo)



...and one of the St Andrew's Residences - Walker House!!



Wreck Beach

So anyway, UBC is built on a peninsula which means there are a few beaches around it, the most famous being Wreck beach since its a nude beach!



Unfortunately the path we intended going down was closed...probably because the snow and rain had torn it apart so much



So we took down a slightly more adventurous route...



As you get down towards the beach, no nude people thank goodness (since they're supposed to be only old men anyway), although a whole bunch of... hippies? anyway, digging something, playing guitar, maybe smoking weed?...



Definitely not the beaches we're used to... although you can't see great mountains from ours... here are some of the views anyway...











Here are steph and tina... love the blue belt huh!



Took a real path back up, damn tiring though! Have to become better friends with the gym here...



Basketball

OK and this doesn't really fit anywhere else, but on Friday last week I went to a basketball game between the UBC Thunderbirds and the Uni of Victoria (the capital of British Columbia). The game went into double overtime, so it was great to watch, but we lost in the end =( But yeh its just like the movies, dancers - cheerleaders - mascots - big crowds, was great fun! Rest of my photos sucked so here are some cheerleaders...we were sitting on the visitors side so only got a rear view of them!



S'it for now

Nick