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This morning's breakfast was a poor offering after yesterday's, as we are self-catering here in Whistler. Still the morning looked promising enough with blue skies and sunshine. Unfortunately by the time we were ready to go out it had started to rain, so out came the trusty gortex coats for the first time.
We decided to walk to the tourist information centre to see about low level hikes. They showed us the web cam at the mountain summit and it was snowing and -1c. They suggested a hike to the Lost Lake, a total distance of around 5km. Perfect, so we set off in the rain hoping the weather would improve later. We did eventually find the Lost Lake, after only one detour; it was a lovely area and obviously the lake was used for swimming in. Today people were content with walking, biking or running on the many tracks and trails in the area. One of us was a little envious of those people on their bikes, even more so, when our inaccurate reading of an information board map had us heading in completely the wrong direction. Not so much a lost lake, more 2 lost silverhairs!! By the
time we arrived back in Whistler village we had walked 9km.
The good news was that by now the weather had improved, so it was a quick dash to the ticket office to buy 2 expensive tickets for the trip up the mountains. Whistler itself is a chalet-style pedestrian village, which lies at the base of Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. These mountains are accessed by a variety of ski lifts and gondolas. Today as it is still early summer season, only 3 lifts were open and one of these was purely for the cyclists, who were again hurtling down the slopes. Our first ride was therefore on the Whistler Village Gondola, which took us up Whistler mountain to a height of 1908 metres in about 25 minutes. From here we took the Peak to Peak Gondola, which does exactly that. It is a world record breaking gondola ride, being the first to join two mountain peaks with the longest and highest free span between structural towers. It certainly is an amazing ride with 360 degree views of the valley and surrounding mountains. It only took us about 11 minutes to transfer from Whistler mountain to Blackcomb mountain, absolutely incredible
and we were lucky to ride in one of only 2 silver gondola cars, which have a small glass bottom viewing area.
On reaching Blackcomb mountain we had a freshment stop in the cafe there, before watching a film about the mountains and the construction of the Peak to Peak Gondola. Normally we could have travelled back down Blackcomb mountain on it's ski lift ride, but they are constructing a new gondola ride, which is opening in November 2018, so we had to return on the Peak to Peak Gondola.
That was hardly a problem, as this time we were fortunate to have the whole gondola to ourselves, although this time it was a red gondola with no glass bottom.
We had been given a leaflet detailing all the many hikes of varying difficulty available from both mountain summits, but only one trail was open. So we decided to take a little stroll along the cleared pathway and were soon walking between 12 foot high walls of snow. The views were again breath taking and we eventually reached the top of the trail after a hard uphill slog. On our return we caught the Whistler Village Gondola back
to Whistler and again managed to have the gondola all to ourselves for the 25 minute ride. We needed an ice-cream fix after all that hikin, so a quick visit to Cow's ice-cream parlour was called for. A huge variety of flavours- shades of Mr Moo's - were on offer; blueberry and apple crisp our choices.
We decided on a chill at home night tonight, so headed across the road for a take away pizza. We are very impressed with Whistler, although it is making us feel rather old, as the average age here must be about 25!!
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Cath
non-member comment
Doughnuts
I did not get to Whistler but it looks great if a bit cold. Did I tell you to try Tim Houghton's ( I think that's how you spell it) doughnuts? Enjoy the rest of it.