Whistler with Billy and Dave

Our first stop was at Whistler, which is an enormous place. Each of the mountains (Whistler and Blackcomb) is 1.5x as big as Snowbird. It seems like there are endless bowls and chutes, and the base village feels a bit like Disney World. Billy and Dave skied with us, which was great.

It snowed hard for a few hours on Wednesday morning, which made for a total whiteout at the top of the mountain. I've never skiied in such low visibility. It felt like skiing blind. On Wednesday night eight  inches of fresh snow fell and the skiing Thursday morning was incredible. We went to Blackcomb and skied powder all morning, including a huge run down Blackcomb glacier on the backside of the mountain. It was pretty wild to ski on a remote glacier surrounded by jagged peaks.

Billy jumped several cliffs, and had a few epic faceplants. Really first-rate thudders. He also landed some of them quite nicely. We all had great runs in the powder and made a few top-to-bottom runs which were a full 5,000 feet. See below for pictures.

We ate well, with highlights including a Mexican joint (in Canada!), spicy sushi, and some locally-caught salmon. Billy bought us all beers at the bar, capitalizing on the lower drinking age in Canada.

Tomorrow we're heading off to explore Vancouver, and then on to ski Mount Baker, where it may be rainy :(

The four of us. It was only sunny for about 10 minutes across the three days, but we caught it here :)

Powder turns Thursday morning on Showcase Glacier high on Blackcomb. Nellie's tracks are the middle ones.

After an epic run on Blackcomb Glacier

Nellie charging a groomer on Friday morning.

Dave shredding the gnar. Patent pending for the nose flap on the googles.

Nellie in the Bumps

On Wednesday morning at Whistler

Nellie with an Inukshuk at the top of Blackcomb (they're all over!)

Dave knows no shame. Luckily the rest of us weren't there to be embarrassed.
(He's lying on the glass floor of the peak-to-peak gondola)