Hilary
There's always something new to learn!
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2000
- Messages
- 6,483
(still in) Whistler
Wednesday, July 30th
We walked over to the base of Blackcomb mountain to find out more about the Family Fun Zone as we werent sure whether it was aimed at younger children than our two. There were some activities, like a bouncy castle, for the smaller ones, but there were also some mean-looking bungee trampolines, a human gyroscope and a tightrope and trapeze. There was also a booking desk for the tandem paragliding flights that DD2 had spotted on the internet and had been keen to try. She wasnt quite so keen now that it actually came to the crunch, however, and wanted some time to think about it before committing herself to booking a flight.
We decided to take a trip up on the chairlift whilst she contemplated the prospect of dangling hundreds of feet in the air attached to a few bits of string and some silk, in intimate proximity to a complete stranger with her life in his hands. There was a series of two lifts, then a bus to take us across to link in with the final lift to the summit. When we got to the bus departure point, the only other passengers were Japanese teenagers with their snowboards and ultra-cool kit. We stood there amongst them like four complete nerds in our shorts and tee-shirts with our cameras and sunglasses. Sightsee-ers? You bet!
We didnt feel quite so out of place when we arrived at the summit as there were a few other non-snowboarders there too, and we all watched from the restaurant decking as the skiers and snowboarders hurtled down the piste and back up on the t-bar lift. The scenery wasnt bad either! Its hard to grasp the scale of everything when youre down in the village in the valley, but up at the peak I was struck by the vastness of the mountain ranges all around us.
By the time we arrived back down at the base, DD2 had decided she would like to book a paragliding trip if there was availability. We enquired. There was availability. DH was wondering whether he should go as well. I was wondering whether DH was sickening for something or just displaying symptoms of mid-life crisis
. DD1 and I werent wondering whether we should join them we knew we were going to stay firmly on the ground! DH decided he may as well go along, so the paperwork commenced. When the representative discovered DD2 was only 14, she said she would radio the pilot (who we could see gliding above us half way up the mountain-side!) to check that he was willing to take her. Im sure it was nothing personal, but the reply came back that she needed to wait until she was 16 
. Well, we couldnt wait around in Whistler that long (much though I would have liked to) so we abandoned that idea and tried to think of an alternative activity to keep DD2s spirits up.
A trip to the beautifully air-conditioned cinema (the temperatures were in the high 30s again today) seemed to fit the bill and we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean and thoroughly enjoyed it. Johnny Depp was brilliant!
Thursday, July 31st
This morning we had another of my it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time trips booked. We were going white-water rafting. If DD1 had been somewhat concerned at the idea of ZipTrekking, she was pretty much quaking visibly at the thought of this trip. Neither she nor I are confident swimmers, although we can both swim in a dry hair breast-stroke kind of fashion, but I had been encouraged by the web-sites claim that non-swimmers are welcome. I kept re-assuring DD1 with this thought. She didnt look convinced.
There were 15 of us in the group and we were all dispatched to the changing rooms to don our most attractive wetsuits. I felt lumpy and bumpy enough before I put it on, but that wetsuit gave me lumps and bumps on top of lumps and bumps I didnt know I had, and I rolled self-consciously out of the changing room to be handed my life-jacket. I would never have believed a life-jacket could improve my appearance, but this one managed to cover up most of the rolls of neoprene that were collecting in assorted blobs between my neck and thighs, only leaving my legs to fend for themselves in the lump-controlling stakes. Once Id zipped up the bootees it seemed to keep all the leg rolls fairly firmly in place, although walking with anything approaching a normal stride was proving tricky. Some worried individuals put on their hard hats at this stage, but the bus driver really wasnt that bad.
We were taken along the valley by bus to Green Lake and, whilst we were given a safety chat, some of the guides inflated the rafts that had been on the trailer behind the bus. Our family was put on a raft together (all for one and one for all) and a lady on her own joined us and our guide, Dave. As soon as we had been introduced, I told Dave that DD1 and I were not confident swimmers, expecting him to reassure me with phrases that included such words of comfort as suitable for non-swimmers or no-one ever falls out, but he just told me that I should listen especially carefully to the safety talk he would give us after wed paddled out on the Lake. After wed paddled out? Wasnt that a little late? I tried to remember what had been written in the indemnity waiver form Id signed so casually a few moments earlier.
Well, the lake couldnt have been more beautiful. It was glass clear and flat calm and surrounded by coniferous forest and mountains, just like a picture postcard. We paddled like a finely tuned team of people who had never paddled together before
, and Dave gave us some tips on how to avoid breaking each others arms or taking anyones eye out with the end of the paddle. By the time we reached the far side of the lake we had definitely improved, and Dave declared us awesome. I later discovered that Dave was to use the word awesome a lot throughout our trip, but at this early stage I was naive enough to believe he might actually think we stood a chance of making it down the river all in the raft and paddling at the same time. We stopped for some more paddling instructions and I was beginning to relax a little. But whats that gentle rushing sound I hear? I looked over between two tall fir trees to one side of us and wondered when they had moved Niagara Falls from Toronto to Whistler. Surely we werent about to go down there? Okay, I exaggerate, it wasnt actually a waterfall, but the water seemed to be moving pretty fast as far as I could tell, and we were inching nearer and nearer to it and Dave hadnt finished his safety chat yet!
Dave then told us what to do if we fell out. DD1 and I had already discussed this scenario and decided that we would just stand up as the water was bound to be pretty shallow after the recent heatwave.
Dont stand up Dave said you could get your foot stuck under a rock and wed never see you again. The water is pretty shallow, (aha! I was right about one thing then) but dont be tempted just lie down, cup your hands and paddle with your hands towards the boat.
Okay - dont stand up, lie down, cup hands, paddle towards the boat. That sounded fairly straightforward.
Paddle at 90o to the current, Dave continued, but at all costs avoid fallen logs. If you go towards a log youll be sucked under and we wont see you again.
Got it dont stand up, lie down, cup hands, paddle towards the boat and at 90o to the current but away from logs. I wanted to ask what happens if the boat isnt at 90o to the current and is next to a log, but didnt know whether Id like the answer, so decided to keep quiet. DD1 was very quiet.
Ill throw you a rope or hold out a paddle to you, and you must grab them here (Dave demonstrated), not here or here, or youll just float away. He may well have added and well never see you again but I was concentrating too hard on the other details to hear him.
Right then dont stand up, lie down, cup hands, paddle towards the boat and at 90o to the current but away from logs, grab rope here, not here, hold paddle here.
At this point, when I was thinking that things couldnt get any worse, I heard Dave shout Look, a bear!
As it happened, the bear wasnt, as I imagined, swimming determinedly towards our raft, licking his lips, but was in a cargo net a couple of hundred feet in the air being taken by helicopter to be relocated away from the village, but I was just about ready to ask Dave to take me straight back to the bus. Once I opened my eyes and saw that the bear was in no fit state to threaten any of us in the raft, I calmed down enough to realise that we were about to set off for the start of the white water. I rammed my foot into the small foot pocket, not convinced that it could possibly hold me back from the icy depths that awaited, and we were off!
Woo hoo! This was serious fun!
As Dave shouted at us to either forward paddle, back paddle, lean in or get down we made speedy progress down the river. The three rafts and two accompanying kayaks overtook one another as one found a faster patch of water or another got momentarily held back by a boulder. We were mostly riding class 1 and 2 water (the gentlest), but at one point Dave beached the raft and told us that the next stretch was class 3 and required a bit more effort from us. Okay, Dave! Awesome would describe the teamwork quite nicely on that stretch, I think. I was getting into my stride by now, and was quite disappointed when we got to a beaching area a few minutes later and discovered it was the end of the trip!
Back on the bus we were instructed where to take our wetsuits, lifejackets, etc., and were told to take off our bootees and empty the bootee juice down the drain! Yuck!
We spent the rest of the day in the gentler pursuits of shopping and eating, and began packing up for our next hotel move tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 30th
We walked over to the base of Blackcomb mountain to find out more about the Family Fun Zone as we werent sure whether it was aimed at younger children than our two. There were some activities, like a bouncy castle, for the smaller ones, but there were also some mean-looking bungee trampolines, a human gyroscope and a tightrope and trapeze. There was also a booking desk for the tandem paragliding flights that DD2 had spotted on the internet and had been keen to try. She wasnt quite so keen now that it actually came to the crunch, however, and wanted some time to think about it before committing herself to booking a flight.
We decided to take a trip up on the chairlift whilst she contemplated the prospect of dangling hundreds of feet in the air attached to a few bits of string and some silk, in intimate proximity to a complete stranger with her life in his hands. There was a series of two lifts, then a bus to take us across to link in with the final lift to the summit. When we got to the bus departure point, the only other passengers were Japanese teenagers with their snowboards and ultra-cool kit. We stood there amongst them like four complete nerds in our shorts and tee-shirts with our cameras and sunglasses. Sightsee-ers? You bet!
We didnt feel quite so out of place when we arrived at the summit as there were a few other non-snowboarders there too, and we all watched from the restaurant decking as the skiers and snowboarders hurtled down the piste and back up on the t-bar lift. The scenery wasnt bad either! Its hard to grasp the scale of everything when youre down in the village in the valley, but up at the peak I was struck by the vastness of the mountain ranges all around us.By the time we arrived back down at the base, DD2 had decided she would like to book a paragliding trip if there was availability. We enquired. There was availability. DH was wondering whether he should go as well. I was wondering whether DH was sickening for something or just displaying symptoms of mid-life crisis
. DD1 and I werent wondering whether we should join them we knew we were going to stay firmly on the ground! DH decided he may as well go along, so the paperwork commenced. When the representative discovered DD2 was only 14, she said she would radio the pilot (who we could see gliding above us half way up the mountain-side!) to check that he was willing to take her. Im sure it was nothing personal, but the reply came back that she needed to wait until she was 16 . Well, we couldnt wait around in Whistler that long (much though I would have liked to) so we abandoned that idea and tried to think of an alternative activity to keep DD2s spirits up. A trip to the beautifully air-conditioned cinema (the temperatures were in the high 30s again today) seemed to fit the bill and we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean and thoroughly enjoyed it. Johnny Depp was brilliant!
Thursday, July 31st
This morning we had another of my it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time trips booked. We were going white-water rafting. If DD1 had been somewhat concerned at the idea of ZipTrekking, she was pretty much quaking visibly at the thought of this trip. Neither she nor I are confident swimmers, although we can both swim in a dry hair breast-stroke kind of fashion, but I had been encouraged by the web-sites claim that non-swimmers are welcome. I kept re-assuring DD1 with this thought. She didnt look convinced.
There were 15 of us in the group and we were all dispatched to the changing rooms to don our most attractive wetsuits. I felt lumpy and bumpy enough before I put it on, but that wetsuit gave me lumps and bumps on top of lumps and bumps I didnt know I had, and I rolled self-consciously out of the changing room to be handed my life-jacket. I would never have believed a life-jacket could improve my appearance, but this one managed to cover up most of the rolls of neoprene that were collecting in assorted blobs between my neck and thighs, only leaving my legs to fend for themselves in the lump-controlling stakes. Once Id zipped up the bootees it seemed to keep all the leg rolls fairly firmly in place, although walking with anything approaching a normal stride was proving tricky. Some worried individuals put on their hard hats at this stage, but the bus driver really wasnt that bad.
We were taken along the valley by bus to Green Lake and, whilst we were given a safety chat, some of the guides inflated the rafts that had been on the trailer behind the bus. Our family was put on a raft together (all for one and one for all) and a lady on her own joined us and our guide, Dave. As soon as we had been introduced, I told Dave that DD1 and I were not confident swimmers, expecting him to reassure me with phrases that included such words of comfort as suitable for non-swimmers or no-one ever falls out, but he just told me that I should listen especially carefully to the safety talk he would give us after wed paddled out on the Lake. After wed paddled out? Wasnt that a little late? I tried to remember what had been written in the indemnity waiver form Id signed so casually a few moments earlier.
Well, the lake couldnt have been more beautiful. It was glass clear and flat calm and surrounded by coniferous forest and mountains, just like a picture postcard. We paddled like a finely tuned team of people who had never paddled together before
, and Dave gave us some tips on how to avoid breaking each others arms or taking anyones eye out with the end of the paddle. By the time we reached the far side of the lake we had definitely improved, and Dave declared us awesome. I later discovered that Dave was to use the word awesome a lot throughout our trip, but at this early stage I was naive enough to believe he might actually think we stood a chance of making it down the river all in the raft and paddling at the same time. We stopped for some more paddling instructions and I was beginning to relax a little. But whats that gentle rushing sound I hear? I looked over between two tall fir trees to one side of us and wondered when they had moved Niagara Falls from Toronto to Whistler. Surely we werent about to go down there? Okay, I exaggerate, it wasnt actually a waterfall, but the water seemed to be moving pretty fast as far as I could tell, and we were inching nearer and nearer to it and Dave hadnt finished his safety chat yet! Dave then told us what to do if we fell out. DD1 and I had already discussed this scenario and decided that we would just stand up as the water was bound to be pretty shallow after the recent heatwave.
Dont stand up Dave said you could get your foot stuck under a rock and wed never see you again. The water is pretty shallow, (aha! I was right about one thing then) but dont be tempted just lie down, cup your hands and paddle with your hands towards the boat.
Okay - dont stand up, lie down, cup hands, paddle towards the boat. That sounded fairly straightforward.
Paddle at 90o to the current, Dave continued, but at all costs avoid fallen logs. If you go towards a log youll be sucked under and we wont see you again.
Got it dont stand up, lie down, cup hands, paddle towards the boat and at 90o to the current but away from logs. I wanted to ask what happens if the boat isnt at 90o to the current and is next to a log, but didnt know whether Id like the answer, so decided to keep quiet. DD1 was very quiet.
Ill throw you a rope or hold out a paddle to you, and you must grab them here (Dave demonstrated), not here or here, or youll just float away. He may well have added and well never see you again but I was concentrating too hard on the other details to hear him.
Right then dont stand up, lie down, cup hands, paddle towards the boat and at 90o to the current but away from logs, grab rope here, not here, hold paddle here.
At this point, when I was thinking that things couldnt get any worse, I heard Dave shout Look, a bear!
As it happened, the bear wasnt, as I imagined, swimming determinedly towards our raft, licking his lips, but was in a cargo net a couple of hundred feet in the air being taken by helicopter to be relocated away from the village, but I was just about ready to ask Dave to take me straight back to the bus. Once I opened my eyes and saw that the bear was in no fit state to threaten any of us in the raft, I calmed down enough to realise that we were about to set off for the start of the white water. I rammed my foot into the small foot pocket, not convinced that it could possibly hold me back from the icy depths that awaited, and we were off!
Woo hoo! This was serious fun!
As Dave shouted at us to either forward paddle, back paddle, lean in or get down we made speedy progress down the river. The three rafts and two accompanying kayaks overtook one another as one found a faster patch of water or another got momentarily held back by a boulder. We were mostly riding class 1 and 2 water (the gentlest), but at one point Dave beached the raft and told us that the next stretch was class 3 and required a bit more effort from us. Okay, Dave! Awesome would describe the teamwork quite nicely on that stretch, I think. I was getting into my stride by now, and was quite disappointed when we got to a beaching area a few minutes later and discovered it was the end of the trip!Back on the bus we were instructed where to take our wetsuits, lifejackets, etc., and were told to take off our bootees and empty the bootee juice down the drain! Yuck!
We spent the rest of the day in the gentler pursuits of shopping and eating, and began packing up for our next hotel move tomorrow.
