• Whistler Blackcomb Alpine High

  Filed under Places
  Sep 4

  
  Once upon a time there was a giant mountain named Whistler all by itself in the coastal mountains of British Columbia, Canada. Then one day some smart dudes from Aspen, Colorado, came along and bought the mountain next door, then built a mega-resort at the base and installed high-speed quad chairlifts straight up to the top, reaching just high enough to un-seat Jackson Hole, Wyoming for the most vertical drop, of any ski resort in North America.
  Back in the day, when I was young and cocky and full of piss and vinegar, my friends and I would hike past the top lodge at the newly constructed Blackcomb, under the out-of-bounds ropes, past the “ski at your own risk” signs, remove our skis to put them over our shoulders, then trudge up a steep incline of snow stairs for about 45 minutes until we reached the top of a massive cornice, overlooking a beautiful glacier with a vista of the awesome coastal mountain range. This back bowl would be filled with fresh, deep powder snow, which is precisely why we went to all this trouble, since the in-bounds ski terrain was plenty challenging enough but this particular location had something that regular ski areas do not have – a cornice (an overhanging mass of windblown snow or ice usually on a ridge).
  This was the birth of extreme-skiing although we didn’t know it, or think-up the cool name but this is where it all started, and why it happened is because to get to the fresh un-tracked snow the next person that hiked-in needed to climb a little higher up the cornice, which meant dropping in (as we called it) from a higher position, or if you were a total adrenaline freak/lunatic you could choose your height all the way up to about a 90 foot drop from the top.

  

  
  Now the thing about jumping off things is a simple rule of thumb that if you drop at 30 feet per second, after 3 seconds you’d be doing about 90 miles per hour. Three seconds doesn’t seem like a very long time, however consider that the speed of gravity is between 0.8 and 1.2 times the speed of light and since I’m not a scientist I’ll just say this about jumping off cornice; when you land you are going very, very fast. Well the problem about landing in deep snow on a very steep surface, is that sometimes the snow tends break loose in big slabs and starts moving with you, this is called an avalanche and precisely why the ski resort doesn’t want people being there and why they tell you that you’re out of bounds and at your own risk. Hence extreme-skiing.
  No hiking trip to the back bowl would be even considered unless there were certain supplies on hand, most important amongst them was a reefer of high-grade weed, which we simply called “red-hair” back in those days. Plus we needed water and oranges, also it was nice to have a walkman stereo but that was a personal choice. So the ritual upon arrival to the cornice would be to catch our breath, admire the view, drink water, eat oranges, savor the reefer, gear up, cue up the Rock music, then take position on the ridge of the cornice, a few feet back from the edge. We never knew if this would be the last day on earth, so we cherished every minute of our bravado, as one at a time, from the lowest to the highest, my homeboys and I would take turns dropping in and shredding up the big glacier bowl of deep powder snow.
  Generally I was the last one to drop in, from the highest position, since I had ski race training throughout most of my younger life the other fellas knew I’d usually be passing them somewhere on the way down the glacier. The other thing to mention is that we were starting out in the High Alpine (above the tree-line), that’s also both the main hazardous thing and our safety zone because even if you slow down to 40 MPH you can’t survive hitting a tree, however those trees could save your life because if the face gives way and starts to avalanche, as it often does, you really have only one choice and that is to ski with it and hope that you can negotiate the narrow trails that form once you reach the tree line. The trees will eventually stop the avalanche, or stop you dead if you make a mistake.
  More than 20 years have passed since my days of extreme-skiing and in modern times mountain enthusiasts have mostly switched to snowboards plus thrill seekers can rent helicopter rides to get access to even crazier terrain than what I used to hike into but as some things change, many things remain the same. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that many of today’s adrenaline junkies of the high Alpine, still enjoy the heightened awareness, provided by smoking a reefer of good weed, moments before the final act of daring descent. Ride on Brothers!

  Tagged as: Whistler Blackcomb
  
  9 Comments

9 Responses to “Whistler Blackcomb Alpine High”

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   wilderness skills said on December 19th, 2009 at 2:26 pm

   Hi. I wanted to drop you a quick note to express my thanks. I’ve been observing your blog for a month or so and have plucked up a heap of sound information as well as enjoyed the way you’ve structured your site. I am setting about to run my own blog however I think its too general and I would like to focus more on smaller topics.

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   MARK GARCIA said on December 30th, 2009 at 6:24 pm

   I’m really stoked ’cause it just began pouring near my house and that means snow riding at the resorts! Plus I got my hands on a discount lift tickets pass for a crazy amount of resorts!

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   watch tv and movies said on March 11th, 2010 at 12:21 pm

   This was awesome

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   https://me.yahoo.com/a/gnXJhLd6ue_hIs8NukZfnC8FWoWbKDE0iw--#2b3df said on March 11th, 2011 at 2:49 am

   check out this sweet skiing video http://mfjs2210.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/skiing-music-and-culture-hi-def/

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