2 months in

and still skiing. I've now had 42 days on the snow, so on track for my 100 day goal for the season. Only had a couple of falls so far, one of which bruised my ribs so I had a few days of pain reaching down to tighten boots, cough and sneeze, but got away quite lightly.

Weather and snow have been a worse than usual whistler mix. It's been far too warm lately and this time last week it was raining all the way up the mountain which pretty much trashed what snow there was. The very high stuff has come back a bit with repeated freezing, skiing and grooming, but the mid and lower slopes have been very granulated and heavy and not nice to ski. More snow is now forecast for tomorrow and monday, not much but hopefully enough to help bond the crud together...

And as it was raining I finally gave in and went boot shopping. I can't remember how old my Salomons were but I'm certain I had them last time I was here as James did all his research and ended up with pretty much the same boot, so they have done fairly well, and I squeezed a last few weeks out of them. The linings were so compressed there was no padding left on the ankle bones, the velcro on the power straps wasn't sticking and the heels and toes were worn on the angle from walking around, and it would have been over $200 just for new liners. Went round 5 of the main boot shops in town and got fairly consistent advice between rossignol and atomic, and the rossis I managed to get for $360 with guaranteed fit. I've skied them 5 days now and there are bedding in quite nicely, might have to get the top of the toe box blown slightly if the linings don't bed in a bit more in the next few days, but fairly minor in the scheme of things, and definitely a better fit than the old ones had become.

it was great having company for the past 5 weeks, and its been strange being back to just the 2 of us this week, although it has been nice to give the liver a little rest. We had the day in vancouver with gary & john on monday and it was so warm I was wandering round stanley park carrying my fleece. Blair will be our final visitor this winter, coming for the weekend in 3 weeks time.

we got our replacement wine delivery with no problems this week, although now the boys have gone back I don't think we will get to drink much of it, so will have to pay the duty and take it down to the US with us. I'll have to take a bottle up the mountain the next time we have a sunny day and get a photo for Chris at the winery against the mountain background, just to show it travels.

Maria also finally got her tablet from TD - its only taken 6 months since we confirmed that we had met all the criteria, and even then it was down to the local branch manager going out and buying us one as the process broke. In fact he had to buy us 2, as the first one came in DOA. Its nice to know that there is still some good customer service and taking responsibility in the banking world....

A non-skier in Whistler

Many people ask me how I spend my time as I don’t ski. Well, as most of you know I have got more into baking and cooking and I need to do something to get rid of those calories so I walk. It depends on the weather as to how far I go each day. When it’s grey and snowing, I might only walk around the village trail or down the stroll and be out for an hour or so.

On days like today, when it’s bright and sunny, I'm out for hours and walk further afield to explore the beautiful countryside. I have crampons/ice-cleats for my boots so I can walk easily (and safely!) over the icy terrain

Today I covered about 12 kilometres as I walked around Alta Lake. How different it looks now to when I wandered this way back in October!

Above, looking north across the frozen Alta Lake. I like the sign which states 'Swim at your own risk. No lifeguard on duty'

I don't think this barbeque on the end of the frozen jetty will be used for a while!

Looking south across the frozen lake, you can see the ski slopes on the mountain

The sun was glinting off this stream as it flowed towards the lake.

And no, my hair hasn't gone completely grey! My coat is like a giant sleeping bag with a hood and keeps me nice and toasty. Bring on the snow :-) 

a good evening...

although we can't claim it was all our own work.

we ordered a couple of cases from Colaneri, an Italian family owned winery we visited in Niagara on the lake, who do a very nice ripasso style wine where they dry the grapes slightly before making the wine to concentrate the flavour. Unfortunately 21 of the 24 bottles had pushed their corks out in transit - we know it was very cold in central Canada last week, so can only guess that it must have been exposed to the cold at some point in the shipping route and the wine began to freeze and expand. Some of the bottles were completely empty, some had a few inches of wine still in, and others are mostly intact but with the corks loosened (the two on the left)

The part bottles still tasted great,  but obviously we can't trust the corks to keep the wine for any length of time, so just had to drink it before it had a chance to deteriorate further. And the others will need to be drunk in the next few days before the replacement shipment arrives :-)

Shift change

Took Kevin down to Vancouver airport on monday morning and swapped him for these two...

Gary and John are here until jan 26th, so plenty of time for their legs to remember how to ski and their throats how to sing apres. They are staying about 300m from us so easy to meet up either on the mountain or in the village

After snowing all day sunday I was a bit concerned about the drive to the airport, but when we hit the road at 6:00am the main roads and Kevin's B&B steep side road had already been ploughed, and the combination of 4x4 and all weather tyres coped with the remaining inch or so of compact snow very well. This type of trip was the main reason we chose to buy the suzuki so its finally paying off, and having done it once I'm not going to be worried over future drives down the highway.

Unfortunately sunday and monday morning's snow turned to heavy rain for the rest of monday all the way up the mountain, so the net result is that the mountain is no better off snow-wise than it was last week. Most locals feel that its not been a very good start to the season so far, but I guess that is the luck of the draw and global warming/freak weather for you. I've now done 25 days on the snow, so a quarter of the way to my goal for the season. A few days have been spectacular, others have been decidedly mediocre, but often you don't know how it will really pan out until you get up the hill. Today was a case in point - forecast cloudy with sunny periods, the village has been clouded in all day but the upper mountain was blue skies and sunshine and absolutely glorious. Almost all of the mountain is open now - all the lifts are running and just a few of the lower runs are still closed due to insufficient coverage. The lift queues were pretty bad on weekends over the holiday period, but now things have calmed down and most lifts have been no or minimal queues for the past couple of days as the remaining skiers are spread over the whole mountain.

Hny - its crap getting old

‎Happy 2015. We've had a great day hanging out at Merlins at blackcombe base. My hip aches like buggery which I wish could be pinned on the skiing but I think is due to the dancing...