A note on west coast snowboarding

Wow. I had kind of forgotten about snowboarding. Historically the problem was partially due to my cheap and outdated equipment. Part of the problem (actually most of the problem really) was that the closest and bestest "mountain" from Toronto features long lineups and a staggering 720ft of vertical. It isn't all that inspiring and its easy for me to find something else to do with myself on any random winter weekend.

I boarded at Grouse Mountain, Whistler / Blackcomb and Cypress while I was in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago.

The first thing to notice is travel time. 15 minutes from Matt and Meghan's place (NorthVan) to the local hills and about a 2 hour drive to the resort. The second through seventh things to notice are the overall quality of terrain and breathtaking scenery (even though visibility was pretty crap by local standards). Then there is the snow. Its ridiculous. Grouse has a base of between 15-20ft (FEET!) of snow this year.

It was a powerful reminder of how easy it must be to take for granted the good things in life around you. I wish I was better at not doing that.

Anecdotal points in no specific order:

1. When the sign says "Experts only due to extremely bad visibility in Whistler bowl" - believe it. At times I couldn't see the snow below me and at times the powder would run up the face giving me a false sense of speed. Kind of scary. I caught some bad edges and banged my head (making the whole situation worse).

2. My favorite run on Grouse was "The Cut", a green run straight down the centre of the hill. You can bomb down it while watching the cityscape and the barges in the harbour doing whatever barges do on sunny Wednesday afternoons in Vancouver. "Or, if gentle slopes and easy-going turns are more your style, head for The Cut..."

3. Blackcomb? Ridge Runner. A beautiful and long blue run from the Blackcomb peak. "Ridge Runner, incidentally, is one of the best cruising runs on the mountain".

4. Whistler? Peak to Creek. Again, I tended to really like the long, intermediate style of run (mostly because it is so foreign to me when it takes an hour to go down a mountain once). “With over 5,020 feet of vertical and seven kilometres of variety, there are no other runs like Peak to Creek around.”

5. Cyprus? First Sun. We went down this a number of times. We went to Cypress when we did because they had just got 20cms of fresh snow overnight. It still seemed like we had the chair to ourselves on this side of the mountain and I didn't see another single person on this run all day. It was advanced and just about as steep as I could manage, but there was SO much snow that it didn't really matter. Cartwheeling in 3 feet of loose snow kind of makes me giggle. There where also lots of places that I could drop in through the trees and pretend that I was hardcore. "But I'm looking down beyond my boots and snowboard at the black diamond run called First Sun ..... The depth perception is so bad halfway down that I reach up and shove my frosty goggles onto my head without stopping. And this stuff isn't really powder, it's not that light and not that dry. But we score clean tracks 90 percent of the way and it's knee-deep, magical and mesmerizing, like riding an orca on a tidal surge." A little bit dramatic perhaps, but pretty accurate for the day I was there (although I missed "first tracks" by about 3 hours).

Matt kept saying, "You won't believe how big Whistler is". Whatever - I am a cynical bastard of late and it would take a pretty big mountain for me to be awed. I have to say though.... "You won't believe how big Whistler is". The sheer immensity and vertical there is awe inspiring and the stuff that dreams are made of. I now understand how people can live there for a winter and feel like they have not truly explored the pair of mountains. One guy we met there was talking about a book he has that charts 200 runs that aren't included in the 200 published runs. I get the feeling that this is just the beginning.

I'm back to loving boarding, but somehow its been wrecked for me. Blessed and cursed... again. Crap.