Whistler

We made it to Whistler no problems with our heads still attached. The greyhound is a bargain, it was about 30$ Canadian each inc bikes for a two and a half hour bus journey north of Vancouver. We did encounter some felons on the return journey but they were pretty friendly. There is plenty of scenery to enjoy on the way up, Canada is MASSIVE.
Whistler village is a ski resort about 130 miles north of Vancouver. It is home to many of the events in the 2012 winter olympics and there is a lot of work going on there at the moment in preparation (there were lady work-men on the roadworks!). Whistler is probably the world's best known mtb mecca and is legendary for being the home of north-shore or 'free-riding' (yep, it wasn't invented in North Yorkshore). North shore is extremely technical, rocky, rooty, mainly downhill (or so we thought) and its famous feature is the north shore skinny - a raised narrow wooden walkway through the trees. Originally I think these were to clear bogs, rivers and the like but they kind of morphed into their own challenge. Whistler also has a monstrous lift-serviced bike park with all sorts of downhill runs, jumps, trails and some of the most ridiculous skinnies I have ever seen. Refreshingly it also has 12 fully stocked bike shops who knew what you were on about, probably had it in stock, and if they didn't, could get it up from Vancouver in a day or two. On the downside it is a bit sanitised, all the restaurants are chain-style faceless kind of places, lacking the character of the local-run places you get in European resorts. We stopped in the UBC lodge, a few km's out of the village but easily reached on the paved valley bike trail. We would definitely recommend this hostel, it is owned by the University of British Columbia and is a typical picturesque ski lodge. We had a private room and it has sauna and hot tub facilities along with communal kitchen etc etc. Dead cheap and dead friendly people running it.
So, on to the riding. Basically, it was well hard! We got four 1/2 days in in total. The first day took in some of the classic trails near the village like 'A river runs through it' which was skinnies galore. (All the trails have great names). ARRTI is about two miles long where we joined it and it took us a couple of hours to ride. Great fun, amazing for improving your skills and bottle, and proper exhausting! On a trail so full-on all the way down you find yourself trying stuff at the bottom that you would never have attempted at the top. The next day we rode up the south flank trail, this is a hiking trail principally and was a monster climb followed by a singletrack traverse and then a cool 21-switchback descent past some falls. On the third day we got lost at the end of the village and a local walking his dog tipped us off for his favourite ride, 'Kill Me Thrill Me'. This was a black diamond (hard) trail, overall uphill and pretty challenging, we were off and pushing a fair few times. But it did have some amazing sections of singletrack, low skinnies, high skinnies and some big open rock sections. Unfortunately on the way back to the village we chose to ride the Green Lake Loop which was a horrific granny ring grind in 90 degree heat, not recommended, plenty of bear poo around too....... Day four we had a rest! Whistler has several swimming lakes which are awesome so we made use of one of those. Day five was curtailed a bit by running round town and back and forth to the hostel trying to sort out our bankcards..... The last day we rode the northwest passage, another hiking trail behind our hostel which ran into the village. We then toddled up to an area called the lost lake. We hadn't been too bothered about this as in the guide it was mooted as the place to take your kids to learn to ride. Obviously Whistler kids are a little bit special....it is a small area criss-crossed with several UK trail centre-style smoothish narrow trails. Branching off these are loads of un-surfaced gnarly singletrack trails that would be quite at home on a UK downhill course. We had a quality afternoon exploring the area and again by the end McThommo in particular was riding stuff she wouldn't have attempted at the start.
To get the most out of Whistler whippeting wise we reckon you need to be a) mega fit b) super-good on the technical stuff, up as well as down c) powerful. There is also a lot of shuttling goes on in the area so that might be a better way to approach it. That said we had a fun time and definitely improved our technical riding.
Whistler riding rating:-
Technical:- Off the scale
Fitness:- Off the scale
Fun:- 7
One last thing, Whistler is chock full of stunning bronzed babes and buff tanned boys, I've never seen anything like it.
Bonus Whistler section to follow.......

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