Wide Eyed in Whistler

One of the few disadvantages to having travelled a lot is that you can become rather blasé about your current travels, convincing yourself that you have seen it all before.

“Man, this is SO great!” Jimmy, my neighbour on the flight to Vancouver, was certainly not blasé about his trip: he was on his first ever flight and was clearly relishing every minute of it.

We were currently somewhere over Greenland, looking down on a range of mountains that were completely untouched by human hands, and completely covered in a thick blanket of snow. The temptation to dismiss this view as something I had seen before was large: almost everyone who has ever flown in a plane must have taken an aerial photo of snow capped mountains. But Jimmy was right: these mountains were truly breathtaking. The snow seemed to smooth out any roughness in the landscape, transforming the hostile wilderness into a soft, inviting dreamland with the apparent consistency of marshmallow. It was a spectacular view but, had it not been for Jimmy, I would probably have given it nothing more a cursory glance before returning to the in-flight movie. When I stopped to think about it, this was something that was deeply shameful. How could I ever claim to be someone who loved to travel if I was more interested in the antics of some second rate movie star than in the sight of a strange new land? I immediately resolved that, for the rest of the trip at least, I would do my utmost to appreciate the wonders of the world around me, and there were plenty of wonders to be appreciated in Whistler, my final destination.

A relatively recent addition to the tourist trail, Whistler didn’t exist at all until the 1960’s, when the isolated London Mountain, in the Fitzsimmons Range of Canada’s Coastal Mountains, was selected as a potential ski resort by a group of men with the ambition of bringing the 1968 Winter Olympics to Canada. At the time, there was no road to the small village at the foot of the mountain, Lake Alta, and electricity and sewerage were still several years away. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the 1968 Winter Olympics were awarded to the rather more inviting destination of Grenoble in France, but the plans to develop London Mountain continued apace: the local nickname for the mountain, Whistler Mountain (in honour of the noisy calls of a resident colony of hoary marmots), was adopted as its official name; the village was renamed as Whistler, and the first ski run opened in 1965.

Whistler has barely looked back since, and the village today could hardly be more different to the rugged, lonely community that must have existed in those early days. Today the village is only a short drive from Vancouver, sitting neatly adjacent to the sea-to-sky highway, and is firmly established as a popular playground for America’s wealthiest and most fashionable skiers; the kind of people who are just as comfortable looking impossibly cool in the bars as they are gliding down the snowy slopes. In fact, it was no exaggeration to say that I often felt as though I had somehow been transported onto the set of the latest US teen drama: a world populated only by those aged 25 or under; where everyone is thin and fashionable, and where people sit outside all evening, on sundecks piled high with glowing heaters, no matter how low the temperature of the surroundings.

While the vacationing population of Whistler may offer a fascinating cultural insight for many people, they are not in themselves the best reason to visit. That is, of course, the skiing. Following its unsuccessful bid for the 1968 Winter Olympics, and a further two unsuccessful bids, Whistler’s position as one of the world’s premier ski resorts was finally confirmed with its award of the 2010 games. Not that the 2 million skiers who already visited the resort every year needed any such confirmation. As someone who had never skied before, it was hard not to be a little overwhelmed by these credentials, and the sight of the serious skiers around the village did nothing to assuage my fears. Everywhere I looked there seemed to be people clad in tight lycra bodysuits, with heads swelled disproportionately by motorcycle style crash helmets, skis slung casually over their shoulder as they clunked around the village in ski boots. And I even ate lunch in a restaurant where a girl on the adjacent table wore her ski goggles for the entire duration of the meal. If that was the scene in the tame, pedestrianised streets of the village, I couldn’t imagine what it might be like out on the actual slopes.

I should probably have realised that anyone wearing an all in one lycra bodysuit, or even ski goggles, would be nowhere near anywhere I might be going on the mountain, and it was with much relief that I greeted the scene around the hut where I, along with the rest of the novice class, departed the ski-lift. The slopes here, which barely sloped at all, were populated with people who looked just as uncomfortable as I felt (though none seemed to have trousers so comically oversized as my own rented pair), who fell over as amusingly as I expected to, and who looked to be enjoying themselves as much as I hoped I would. And I have to say that I really did enjoy myself. After a fairly tentative start we had all soon mastered the snowplough (mastered is perhaps an exaggeration) and we graduated from an area of almost complete flatness to the fully fledged nursery slope. From there, is was just a few hours before we were able to turn in either direction, weave in and out of cones and thoroughly enjoy the feeling of freedom as we zoomed down the slope. It’s true that the slope we were on was probably at an angle of about 5° (the neighbouring green run looked almost vertical in comparison) but that didn’t make the experience any less exhilarating and by the end of the day we were all keen converts to the sport.

Away from the slopes, Whistler was a fantastic place to be. The village itself is pleasant enough, if unremarkable: a sanitised; closely managed; commercial resort constructed in the style of a village, rather than an actual village, but its location means that it doesn’t need to be anything remarkable. Surrounded as it is by snow capped mountains covered with a liberal spread of pine trees, anything man made would have paled into insignificance; it was impossible not to be overwhelmed by the majesty of nature. Walking trails led through woodlands and around frozen lakes, which sparkled under the brilliant blue sky that accompanied my visit.

Amazing as it was, it was inevitable that after a while the stunning beauty of my surroundings would begin to fade as I grew used to it. I would always know the mountains were stunning, but I would fail to notice them; the view of trees and snow from my window would begin to seem almost normal. It was at these times that I would remind myself of my flight, and of my resolution not to become blasé about the sights I saw. I would pause and look out of my window, or look over the shops in the village, marvel at the beauty of the location and think to myself:

“Man, this is SO great!”

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