Well, an early start for our only full day in Whistler, was it going to be worth it. An early start on holidays? May well you ask, but yes we were up at 4.45am ready to meet a tour guide at 5.45. We were hoping for some bear sightings.
Our guide, Jeff, was certainly a person more comfortable talking about bears than he was interacting with humans. That's good if you want to learn all there is to know about the black bears that live around Whistler. If you simply want to see them, then his delivery would be lost on you. Luckily, we fall into the first category of visitors.
And bears we found. This young male was grazing very close to the track and we watched him for quite some time, asking questions about their habits and being castigated about how human behaviour is a real threat to the bear population.
At the end of the blog is a short clip of this bear wandering close by where we were gathered.
Later we came upon two other bears (they are solitary animals) who were keeping an eye on each other on different parts of the mountainside. Both older males.
Unfortunately, we were unable to find the mother and two cubs known to be living quite close to the village.
Possibly one of many deer we shall see on our trip, but cute nonetheless. This is a young buck, denoted by his short horns in velvet. Later we saw a doe as well.
Back in Whistler village we had coffee. It occurred to me that it was a bit late for people to be breakfasting, but then realised that it was only 9.30am!!!!!
In winter, Whistler is a ski village of course. In summer it is a mecca destination for mountain bikers. Everywhere you go there are shops with rows of bikes for hire and lots of young (mostly) people kitting themselves out for a shot at the mountain.
Today the mountains (both Whistler and Blackcomb) were shrouded in cloud, but it was coming and going. So after our coffee we headed up Whistler Mountain on the gondola to take the famous Peak to Peak gondola across the valley to Blackcomb Mountain.
This is such an amazing feat of engineering that even despite not being able to see the village below, the sheer distance between the cables and the distance to the valley floor were enough to wonder at the engineering marvel that it is.
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| The valley floor through the glass bottom of a P2P gondola |
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| Looking down to the river through the valley |
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| Gondolas disappearing in the clouds |
When we'd had a quick scout about at the P2P terminal on Blackcomb, we headed for the shuttle bus to take us to the Seventh Heaven chair lift. There were already a number of snow boarders on the bus which is equipped with racks on the outside to accommodate skis and snow boards.
The short ride on the bus took us to the base of the chair lift which we boarded to take us further up the mountain. There is a glacier at the top, but we did not hold out much hope of seeing very much.
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| Cool dudes loading on the 7th Heaven chair |
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| They really are cool - the skis or boards are part of their being |
Again I took a short video of these guys taking off down the run and disappearing into the mist.
After a quick look round, we headed for the on mountain food outlet where we had some very welcome Moroccan beef soup. There was a break in the weather when we finished so we wandered around outside and took a picture of the valley on one side.
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| Taken at the top at 7th Heaven |
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| Fairmont Hotel, Whistler |
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| Ready to zip |
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| Ian coming in to land |
We have lots of other shots taken with us going upside down on the last line. But that's for another time.
Here are the few short clips I managed to take. One of our first bear, then another of the skiers and the last one of the raging creek in Whistler village.
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