Whistler Village, taken from Blackcomb Mountain
This weekend is a holiday weekend in British Columbia (Family Day weekend), and we decided to spend it in Whistler. It’s only a 75 minute drive from our house to Whistler when I follow the speed limit (or less than an hour if I hit the gas a bit more), but I find it just too far to drive up and down to go skiing. So we normally ski on Cypress Mountain in West Vancouver, which is just 20 minutes away and where we have a season ski pass. But although I like Cypress a lot, it is relatively small compared to Whistler (Cypress has 53 ski runs, Whistler over 200) and I also like to stay overnight in a ski resort instead of going home after skiing.
We rented a suite at the Hilton in Whistler, which was a good choice. The location of the Hilton is great, in the middle of the village at the end of the ski slopes and next to the main ski lifts. The room itself was quite good (generally I’m not a big fan of Hilton Hotels in North America), with an open fireplace (with wood, not gas) in the living room and even a steam bath in one of the bathrooms. The views from the balconies were nice, but it was too cold to sit outside and enjoy it. We had a great experience and I would not hesitate to stay at this hotel again in the future.
Peak 2 Peak express
As a ski area Whistler is excellent, there are a lot of runs and they are very well maintained, especially compared to the ski resorts in Europe. You can ski at the lower level on runs through the forest, or you can go up to the top where it’s alpine wonderland with fantastic views. Whistler combines 2 ski areas, that of Whistler and that of Blackcomb Mountain. They are connected by the Peak 2 Peak, a 4 km gondola ride between the 2 mountains (with over distance 3 km between 2 towers, which we were told was a world record). Despite the unusually warm and dry winter this year all runs were open and the snow quality was pretty good.
Scott skiing down into Whistler Village
Scott has been taking ski lessons for a couple of weeks already (once a week for 2 hours per time) and I decided to go skiing with him. That worked out quite well, kids learn to ski so quickly. He has no fear whatsoever and just goes straight down slopes without worrying about dangers or about whether he will be able to stop. I tried to teach him to make curves, but he likes speed so much that he did not really listen. He did not fall once during the 2 days, but of course he was exhausted at the end of both days. I look forward to a lot more skiing with him in the future!
Next to skiing we had a very relaxed time. I took the kids swimming in the open air pool at the Hilton, which was quite an experience because it was -11 Celsius outside. Whistler has some high end restaurants with top chefs and excellent wine lists, so we checked out some of those. And Grace went shopping with her sister (who was visiting us), which is also something that you can do well in Whistler. There are also a lot of art galleries, with some of the same painters that we came across in galleries on Maui during our trip a couple of months ago.
Because the Sochi Olympics started this weekend there was a real Olympic atmosphere in Whistler (exactly 4 years ago the Olympics were held in Vancouver and Whistler), and so we watched quite a lot of sports as well. I normally hardly ever watch TV (I find it a waste of time), but I enjoyed watching the opening ceremony and some of the skating and snowboarding events. The kids also liked it and preferred it over their usual kids series on Netflix.
It’s great to have a resort like Whistler so close to our home. It’s almost too close to stay overnight, but it’s a different experience when you stay in the village instead of taking a car back, so I am glad we turned the ski trip into a mini-break. I’ll probably be back once or twice this season for skiing, and also in summer I plan to spend more time in Whistler’s mountains (trail running & mountain biking).