Jan 14 - again, more of the same

How can one be bored with sunny days ? We've been spoiled from so many years skiing here. A bad day here is better than a good day of skiing the east ... or think of all those people skiing Horseshoe Valley or Collingwood close to Toronto -- they'd love to have the skiing that we're getting.

After a couple of runs at Whistler we took Peak-2-Peak over to Blackcomb again and skied 7th Heaven the bulk of the day. We also took a couple of runs on each of the Glacier Express and Jersey Cream Express chairs. At the end of the day we took the P2P back to Whistler and Sandy headed down while I squeezed in one more run down Ptarmigan. Fully expecting to find slush at the bottom of Ptarmigan I was surprised that it had not softened, so mid-mountain stayed below freezing while the alpine areas enjoyed +5C. In the sheltered area at the base of 7th Heaven the thermometer at the chair read over 60F .... but that was in the sun. I then found the same thing that Sandy had -- it never got over freezing in the village either and the Downhill was quite icy.

Today and tomorrow look the same, with temperatures in the alpine at 7C to 9C, light winds, sunny, perhaps a mix of sun and cloud tomorrow, supposedly going to +3C in the valley, but so far that has not panned out. When it's soft and wet up top you really prefer it to be soft the entire way down. This is unusual, this temperature inversion -- the norm is soft powder up top with temperatures below freezing, a transition area close to the bottom where it's a mix and then wet snow at the village level. In the spring it's not unusual for there to be good skiing up top with flowers and grass at the bottom. At that point you have to download on the final chair, obviously.

So ... another day on our legs and we had to decide on a restaurant. 21 Steps was one that we tried last year and liked, so we went back. I had another iceberg/blue cheese salad as a starter with a stuffed portabello mushroom as a main course. It was stuffed with, well, actually layered with, spinach and feta cheese and accompanied by mashed potatoes and broccoli; Sandy had an olive starter and a pasta. She could only eat half of the pasta -- the rest is now in our fridge -- perhaps if we have lunch in the condo again it will be eaten.

David sent an email wondering if we'd been on the glass-bottomed gondolas on the Peak-2-Peak. The answer is no -- they are not really glass-bottomed anyway. There is a glass square in the center of the gondola, perhaps 2 feet square, surrounded by waist-high railings. It's a gimmick -- from 1400 feet up if you're looking down from the sides you are almost looking straight down anyway. The side windows go to seat-level on all four sides. There's no lack of downward visibility in any of the gondolas.

The gondolas are numbered, but since they put them away at night the order is not the same on any given day. The silver, so-called glass-bottomed gondolas are numbered 27 and 28. At each boarding station there is a chart showing the order of the gondolas that day so if you really wanted to wait for 27 or 28 you would know how long you'd have to wait. I noticed on the chart yesterday that 27 and 28 were half-way around from each other, i.e. if 27 were just going by, 28 would be 13 or 14 gondolas away. I'm sure that they do that deliberately so that if you really want to wait for one of those gondolas you wouldn't have to wait too long. At 11 minutes point-to-point, leaving a couple of minutes at the boarding and exit stations, it would be about 25 minutes for a complete circuit.

I'm sure that this gondola will be a hit for sightseeing during the summer and during the Olympics. We always see some tourists, i.e. non-skiers, during the winter getting off the Village Gondola without ski gear. We did the same once at Grouse Mountain with the kids, going up there for dinner, getting a good view of Vancouver, and then heading to the airport for our overnight flight back to Toronto. It was funny getting onto that gondola with all the skiers bound for night skiing.

That's it for now.