Portland to Whistler

Today we left Portland and headed North to our final destination, Whistler BC. I slept really well in the van, in the bottom bunk of Big Red, and let Phil T sleep in the one open bed in the house. This turned out to be a great decision as the house was who knows how many girls living in it and they were continuously cycling through the bedroom all night.

Todays drive started just as last nights drive ended, beautiful weather and a relatively open road. Unfortunately just outside of Portland the skies opened and was had rain basically all day until we arrived in Whistler some 9 hours later. The views were not terribly obstructed by the rain however and the scenery was incredible. As we traveled North is just kept getting greener and gnarlier, especially once we passed the border and got into Vancouver. The road winding North of the city to Whistler skirts the coastline and despite the construction delays was a real treat of the trip.

Just as we were settling into the mountains of BC and slow driving pace, we had an encounter with a rogue Canadian driver. Becuase of the construction, the lane we were in merged to the left. The Vans length is substantial and finding a hole in traffic is not always easy. As we began to merge Big Red, captain canada had second thoughts and decided that he didn't want us ahead of him. He forced his way ahead of us and ran Big Red off the road at 50mph, over and orange marker pole, over a jump (the first of the trip, though I thought I would be on my bike) and onto the shoulder. Suprisingly Big Red escaped unscathed, completely. I gave Phil T an earfull for his reluctance to back down, but I'm just happy nothing was damaged.



An hour after pumelling the Canadian Cones we arrived in Whistler Blackhomb. The place is beyond belief. Kim really went out of here way to help us out here, not only is the room rate only slightly more than free, but there was a cold case of beer waiting for us in the fridge when we opened the door. We each enjoyed a cold one as soon as we saw it.


We parked Big Red right in front of the Marriott, took the bikes off the rack and hit the trails for a little experimental ride around town, looking for a place to eat. The trails start quite litterally right out our back door and in one minute we were descending down a raked, bermed single track with bridges, ladders and other features we expected to see, and its even better in real life. Our ride tonight was abbreviated though as were just rolling into town to grab dinner, but not a bad route to stumble upon. We even grabbed a couple of shots along the way.


The lifts here run from 10am to 8pm, as we are pretty far north of the equator in the summer the sun sticks around for a while. It will be a long day of riding tomorrow and we plan on catching the first chair up. We'll be able to take our time and make sure we get the most out of each run. The plan is to use the Downhill bikes as we didn't see any all mountain bikes on any of the trails today. For tires, well its raining again as I type this, and it will be scattered tomorrow as well. I'll start on the 909's, a medium terrain with wide spacings meant for the sand. We'll post tomorrows ride and shots when we stop pedalling.