I’d cracked the blinds on Friday morning to find every tree laden with yet more fresh snow, pushing the total for the week to over two metres. And today, the sky was Pacific blue, the mountains seemingly close enough to touch. The forecast predicted light winds and sunshine, which meant that the highest lifts in the most inaccessible areas of Whistler Blackcomb would open, after days of closures due to high winds and avalanche blasting.
That made Friday’s choice of location a no brainer: the intoxicating, intimidating Harmony Ridge. Or, even better, its beguiling little sister Symphony, on the other side of Whistler mountain.
We met Steve at the usual place – by the totem pole outside the Roundhouse Lodge, 1850 metres up on Whistler Mountain – and made a beeline for the Harmony chairlift. On the Friday before the President’s Day holiday – Whistler’s busiest weekend of the year bar Christmas – we feared huge queues. The Harmony and Symphony areas are always the last to open; after fresh snow, every powder hound in Whistler makes a beeline for Harmony. But today, we seemed to be ahead of the game, and the queue was small. For now.
Halfway up on the chair, Steve’s computer genius bore fruit. He’d set up a system linking his computer to his phone, sending him a text message when certain lifts opened; his pocket duly bleeped to inform him that the Symphony chairlift was up and running. At the top, the sign still read closed, but in the distance, we could see the empty chairlift moving. Armed with our inside knowledge, we dropped into the practically deserted amphitheatre.
I’m not a good enough skier to take full advantage of the conditions that presented themselves: a thousand acres of untracked powder over six hundred metres of vertical – starting on a high, exposed ridge and ending in a series of beautiful gladed trails below the treeline. But I will never forget the experience as long as I live. We carved our own lines in knee deep silk on Rhapsody Bowl, made spontaneous snow angels when the talent ran out, picked our own routes between the trees. Marianne and I found ourselves on a tricky single-track trail which wound back and forth across an open creek. We were forced to avoid branches, roots and ten-foot deep holes: a little too close to the wire, but I wouldn’t have missed it. We arrived at the bottom with hearts pounding and muscles aching.
Then we went up and did it again. Such is the beauty of this place. You could ski it a thousand times without ever following the same route twice.
And then, suddenly, twilight began to fall on the Odyssey. More than halfway through our last full day, and we were beginning to visit favourite haunts for the last time: Low Roll, the sweeping powder blast from the top of Harmony Ridge; our own route between the trees below the Roundhouse to Dave Murray, the Olympic downhill run, where your skis feel rocket propelled at every sniff of the fall-line. And many, many others.
For Friday’s last supper, the vote was unanimous: The Keg. I’m not generally bothered about steak, but it’s different in Canada, and The Keg is a bit special. Joined by the Judkins family, we demolished a lot of cow and two bottles of fine British Columbia red. And it was good.
Saturday was a bonus: the first time Marianne and I have skied on the day we left a resort. Time constraints meant it had to be Blackcomb, because our apartment was located at its base. Beside extrovert, flashy Whistler with its signature bowls, Blackcomb is a little more austere. A place of hidden delights, often quieter than its neighbour because it gets less sun. Because we started up on its Wizard chairlift virtually every day, I came to think of it as ‘our’ mountain.
We couldn’t leave without bidding farewell to Seventh Heaven, which hasn’t failed to delight over four weeks and a dozen skiing companions. One run through the bumps of Xhiggy’s Meadow and a lightning blast down the groomed lower sweep of Cloud Nine, and we were done: growing crowds forced us over the top and into the Glacier. Blackcomb’s jewel, it rivals Symphony for drama and Harmony for the demands it makes on skiers and boarders. With ever-improving technique, my final run down it was by far the best: I can, if I’m brave, almost keep up with Marianne.
After a brief lunch with the others, it was our turn for goodbyes: Nina and Martin and the girls are in Whistler for another week, and Steve has taken root: we’ll not see him until April. On both counts, it’s been an absolute pleasure. And perhaps now is the time to thank the others who have helped to make the Odyssey the huge success it was: Joe, Mike, Lucy, Cheryl, Simon and Kiki.
And that’s almost it, aside from a dog story, a pleasant surprise and a less pleasant surprise. On our way out on Thursday morning, we encountered a woman walking a very excitable ridgeback puppy who greeted both of us enthusiastically and took a shine to Marianne’s leather mittens. On Saturday, after an epic final run down, we saw her again, temporarily locked out of the parking garage by her owner. I wanted to take her home. Marianne said she wouldn’t fit in our hand luggage.
After a whirlwind hour of packing and tidying, we exited in two stages, making for our coach pickup point across the road; when I returned for the ski bag three minutes later, I found the apartment’s three owners – the incoming tenants – just arrived. After a lot of email contact with Bruce Ward, the primary contact, over the past six months, it was a pleasure to meet him: he put in a lot of effort to make our stay stress-free and comfortable, and his apartment is a fabulous home from home.
After a ridiculously easy inbound trip, I guess we were due a little bad luck: our transfer coach blew a tyre on the way to Vancouver, and a major route through the city was shut after some yoofs apparently made a pipe bomb and left it in a park. Yes, really. The upshot was a somewhat fraught journey and a rather late check-in.
But we made it. As I write, we’re 35,000 feet above an unidentified chunk of land south of Baffin Island. Five and a bit hours to Heathrow. I guess it’s time for the Fat Lady to sing. Back to real life, to normality, as people keep saying.
Except it won’t be, not quite. Experiences like this make you view life differently, take stock of your priorities. I don’t think either Marianne or I will be quite the same again. And it’s all good.
If you’ve got this far, thanks for putting in the effort. To borrow a wannabe author’s cliché, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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