Whistler Day Three

Our third day brought us sunshine and spring skiing conditions. Put away the goggles and get out the dark glasses and sunblock. Although the previous day on Blackcomb was fun, we decided to head back to the Symphony Amphitheatre on Whistler. We warmed up on a couple of runs served by the Big Red Chair. This has become a regular run for us, and not only as a warm-up. Normally if you come down from the backside on either The Saddle, or Glacier Bowl you would then catch the T-bar to get you high enough to ski to the lodge or back down the village side of Whistler. With the T-bars closed this whole week, we'd have to ski all the way down to the bottom of the Big Red Chair and then catch it back up. A minor inconvenience when you're hungry; knowing that the lodge is right there, but you'll have to make a run down a crowded groomed run before you earn your baked potato.

After our warm-ups we went up to the peak. The view up there is absolutely breathtaking, or at least it was 20 years ago. Now? I can't say; every time Aaron and I got to the top, a massive cloud would push in. Every Time. Notice the peak in the picture with bright blue skies? It was gray with about 10 feet of visibility when we got to the top fifteen minutes after this picture was taken.

We skied over to Symphony, with Aaron finding every opportunity to put some distance between his skies and the snow. I was able to get him to stop long enough one time for me to get the camera out.


The Flute Bowl, on the far side of the amphitheatre looked inviting so we made our way over there. If you kept up your speed on the run that led to the bowl, you could make it high enough to get to a gateway where you could take off your skis and start hiking, or you could drop into the good, but tracked-up, snow near the bottom. We did the latter initially, but eventually we had to give the good snow a try. I hiked about a third of the way up a clean white hill and dropped down to the bottom. Aaron went all the way up and had a great run through untracked knee-deep powder.

Around 1:30 we were starting to get pretty hungry, so we made our way up to the top of Symphony, down to Harmony Bowl, up to the Peak, down the Glacier Bowl, down Old Mans, up the Big Red Chair, and finally to the lodge. A mere 1-hour jaunt to food. After lunch we made a couple of runs down Jimmy's Joker and decided to call it a day.

We hit the hot tub, went into the village and got a pizza to take back to the room. There we watched various shows featuring people doing stupid things and hurting themselves. General note: If your buddies are very eager to video tape you leaping off of something, eating something, or blowing something up, maybe you should stop and reconsider. But then, I'm old and have discovered, to my chagrin, that I'm mortal.