I Can Definitely Confirm That Spring is in da House!

Once again it's been a very long time since I've updated this blog, so I apologise for the long windedness of the post. Please feel free to scale it in numerous attempts if you prefer! I shall leave it completely up to you!

I believe last time we spoke I had just knackered my ankles in the park at Blackcomb! Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, this injury did indeed rule me out of the lifty Olympics, although, I was an interested onlooker! It really is pretty handy working a job where people have both the knowledge and the power to get things ike this sorted out. Basically one of the gondola's was left running especially for us to get up the hill, where a small rail course had been set out, using the proper Whistler terrain park rails. Plus there was free beer and food from the nearby mountain restaurant! It became even better when a piste basher turned up, asked us if we waned anything done, and promptly created a kicker for people to huck themselves off! Needless to say a lot of fun was had, and despite not being able to snowboard, it was still good taking photo's of the evening, and generally sharing good times!

I think last time I wrote anything, it was the start of the de-springing of spring. After a week or two of beautiful sunshine and warm temperatures, the weather suddenly became decidedly winter again! Temperatures dropped to below -10 again at the peaks, and we even saw a few inches of snow falling in the village! The views from the hut at the top of the Harmony Express where I work receded from the majesty of the entire Garibaldi Provincial Park and Black Tusk, to just about being able to see Blackcomb mountain, to only being able to see about 2 yards in front of you! It has to be one of the most bizarre feelings ever riding down from the top station of that lift in the fog. The run involves heading down a ridge, the edges or which are marked by bamboo canes and coloured markers. In the fog however, you can't see the edges very well, and you can only just make out the piste markers. The strange feeling comes because the light is so flat, that you also cannot make out any bumps in the snow ahead of you! This means that you cannot see how fast, or in what direction (other than down!) you are travelling. It almost makes you feel slightly sea sick, as your head and legs can feel that you're moving, but your eyes can't reconcile that with anything that you see around you! So far I've only managed to fall off the side of the run once, so I've been doing pretty well!

Luckily, in the middle of all this bad weatheer, I managed to get away to the sun for some time thanks to the visit of Loo! She managed to see Whistler look relatively pretty, cos after a week or so cloud and rain, the rain turned to snow, covering all the brown earth poking it s head through the snow pack on the pistes down to the village. It was almost like being in Whistler in January again, with a good few inches falling and settling all the way down to Village level, with more being found in the Alpine areas.

Actually, this snow gave rise to one of the best days liftying! The wind was blowing and the clouds were in, meaning that there was no chance of opening up Harmony or Peak, and the only chance was the T-Bars, where I happened to be working that day! So the me and the other T-bar lifty, with the Peak chair guys headed down to start digging out the t-bars to see if it was going to be possible to open them. After about 10 minutes of digging, we then had to retreat into the hut to await for instructions. There were the 4 of us in the heated hut, stereo on, chatting about random stuff for about 3 hours, getting paid double time cos it was good friday! Good times. After this it was decided not to open them which meant I had to work on the Fitzsimmon Chair, situated in the main village, and normally only open till the early afternoon. Therefore after about an hour of work, I went on my lunch break for an hour, and by the time I'd returned the lift was closing! All in all a wood day and good times!

After this snow and coldness I was really looking forward to getting away from it to Vancouver with Loo for the weekend. The hotel was rather nice, Loo having paid for (Thanks Loo!) a large suite with a rather comfy sofa bed situated in front of a large satellite tv! It was situated on Robson St in the heart of downtown Vancouver, and was within walking distance of a large portion of the sights! It was quite refreshing becoming a tourist again for a day or two. Had an excellent curry on Robson Street the first night. Thes 2nd day consisted of being very touristy. Went to Gastown, took photo's of the steam powered clock, the statue of Gassy Jack etc, before heading over to Stanley Park. This really is an incredible place to have within 20mins wa lking time of the centre of such a big city. It really is a slice of temperate rain forest right on the doorstep of Vancouver!Some huge trees were found and duly photographed, which I think may have bored Loo a little bit. Added to the trees, the views across English Bay and the Beaches are fantastic. The weahter was lovely and warm, and people were flocking t o the beaches after work for a few beers, soccer, basketball, street hockey, cycling. It really was pretty cool! We then caught the boat to Granville Island, which again was good. The market there is fascinating. Plus, I got to pay a quick trip to the Grnaville Island Brewing Co, where I bought a nice bottle of limited edition beer! It was really good ale, the only problem being (As with all Canadian Beers), they make it too fizzy! Still, with it nice and chilled, it made a very good accompianment to watching the pay per view films in the hotel room! All in all a rather good weekend. Thanks for visiting Loo!

Little did I know that my next visit to Granville Island would be altogether different! After travelling back from Vancouver, I had one day of work to get through before our end of season lifty party. This meant charging back to the locker room after clocking off to get changed, and jumping straight on the bus bound for Vancouver! Officially no alcohol was allowed on the bus, but everyone had packs of beer secreted around their person, or hip flasks or Jaeger or Whisky! This meant that the bus ride down was rather rawkus to say the least! 2.5 hours later I was standing on the river side at Granville Island again, this time with a group of 60 or so less than sober lifty's!After getting frisked when getting on the boat, we saw that it was a pretty cool Two decks, a dining room area, and a dnace floor and disco. I can remember having fun, but the details are pretty hazy from here on in! We cruised around False Creek for a while, before docking again and heading home. Again I felt sorry for the bus drivers, as we were probably pretty loud on the way back. Well, all apart from me, although I can neither confirm or deny the rumour that I spent the majority of the bus ride in the company of a young lady!

Anyway, after 2 hours of sleep, suffice to say the next day was one of my worst days at work yet. Although that was closely followed by the day after when I rode into a tree during a break. Looking back at it, I was pretty lucky, and I will be a lot more cautious in the trees in the future. I managed to get away with absolutely no serious injuries, just a number of sore bits on my knee, my chest, my hand, my neck and a cut on my face! Very lucky indeed, and a bit of a wake up call!

Anyway, thankfully escaping from that unscathed meant that I was free to enjoy the last day of Winter operations here, and the last day of Blackcomb opening. Although I couldn't quite handle the early morning endeavours of Rich and Brendon, I joined them later on in the day! Thankfully they had already got the Couloir Extreme out of the way, as well as Spanky's Ladder, which is good, but the hike up sounded slightly icy from Bredon and Rich's description! Anyway I joined them in time to head up towards the glacier. The weather was gorgeous, with Rich, Brendon and Robbie wearing t-shirts. Following a short hike onto the glacier and along the windlip, we parked ourselves and had us a quick beer. It was in fact Kokanee, which advertises itself as a glacier beer, so it was all very appropriate! There followed numerous photo poses, including the four of us topless in the snow! The other guys then decided to snowboard down the glacier without their shirts on, and much fun was had! It really was one of the best days up here! Friends, beer, snow, mountains - what more do you want. We carried on going all the way through till closing time. Stopping every now and then for a beer, going over jumps with some style. Brendan making some really nice tail grabs, Rich doing some big fs180's, and myself landing quite a nice melon and a bs 180, which felt big, and also earned me compliments from two random snowoarders sitting near the jump which was cool! We then rode all the way down to the base. This is one of the reasons why snowboarding is so great! A large portion of the ride down is a long relatively flat cat track, but with a group of snowboarders it's like a little playground, doing little wheelies and nose slides, finding hits on the side of the run to get air off and so on. It really is so much fun, and watching me and Rich come down, we really have progressed so much, just being able to mess around and have so much fun on the slopes. We managed to board all the way down to Merlins at the base of the mountain, which was almost quite emotional after an entire season of doing it! The snow was reduced to one thin strip along the side of the piste. Thanks to the aforementioned progression, me and Rich pretty much straightlined it all the way down, managing to ride out through the large puddles that are now appearing at the base of the slopes!

It really is the end of winter, and another stage of this trip. In many ways, I am more certain and positive about what I want to do and what I want to get out of my time here in Canada. I will be working as a lifty probably until the start of June. In the meantime, I am still looking for tree related jobs. I have a contact on Vancouver Island so it would be ideal if I could get some work with him and combine it with a trip to the island. I've also got a friend on the island who has offered to show me around, and it'd be really cool to sort that out! I've also decided I want to head up to the Yukon and try and see the midnight sun, and be within the Arctic Circle, which would be kinda cool! I also have friends in Toronto who are offereing to show me around the town and surrounding area which would be ace. This may possibly include a trip to Quebec, if I stop being scared of the French. Actually a bunch of the lifty's are from Quebec, and they're all pretty cool so I'm not really too worried about it! I'm reckoning that I might even fly back to the UK from Toronto, as I can't really see the point of the expense required to get a return flight from Vancouver to Toronto, as well as the flight home!

I shall be giving it some thought anyway. I trust you are not too exhausted after tha baring of my soul! Hopefully I shall write again sooner, so that I don't have to write so much next time!