 Most Lifts Open  Shane Szocs' New Pass  Mike Douglas  Douglas on the Flatbar  Szocs with Whistler in Back (opens Thursday!)  Highway 99 Tuesday Morning  Shane Shredding  Mike Douglas, Shane Szocs, Cam Trumner Words and pictures by Matt Harvey. |
News of Whistler's abundant early season snow has been plastered on
Newschoolers.com for the past week, so I had to see it for myself. I rolled into
town Friday afternoon after a 14 hour commute from Ottawa, Ontario. It was like
Christmas. Snow blanketed the trees as far as the eyes could see, and Christmas
lights marked the entrance of every hotel and restaurant. The stories on NS were
no lie - a good two feet of snow filled the ditches on the side of the road.
It was around 8pm, almost time for the 2Track premiere. I stopped by Nate Loader's place for some quick drinks with NS Clothing, 4FRNT, Jib Culture rep Jeff Schmuck and we headed to the village. All the local shreds were in attendance like Chris Turpin, Ryan McKeeman, and Rex Thomas. Pretty standard Whistler slosh fest till the wee hours, then grabbed some sleep before opening day! In classic Harvey fashion, I totally slept in. Missed out on the grand finale of Freeze Factor (where thirty people stayed out in the cold doing gnarly elimination challenges such as slurpy chugs and kidney bobbing to win a $1400 pass), and of course, missed the first bunch of lifts. When I finally got down to the Daylodge to get my passes, it was evident that Whistler Blackcomb was off to an epic start of the season. I met up with 2Track cinematographer Paul Cotton and made some turns. The pow could be found by a blind man with no legs so we had a pretty dope first day of the season. Little did I know, the best was yet to come. I totally lied at the beginning of this story. I didn't just decide to ditch school to be at Whistler for opening day. So Saturday evening, after a grueling (the good kind of grueling) day of powder turns, I met up with Shane Szocs to start work on the 2004 High North Ski Camp web site. We really got nothing done on Saturday, so to bed I went, only to wake up eight hours later to another foot of totally dry snow. Sunday out-did Saturday ten fold. There were no line ups, and tons of the white fluffy. Shane and I met up with Cam Trumner and Mike Douglas to shred the gnar. We went through the park for the first time to find a vast array of features to play on. The Blackcomb park was better than an Edelweiss or Fortune Park in peak season (if you don't know where Edelweiss or Fortune is, consider yourself lucky). At the top was a box with a ledge on the side, then a box rainbow, a trapezoid, a long curved box, three variations of flat rails, and a flat with a wee jump at the end. Then on the side, which I didn't even see until Monday, were three picnic tables and some tiny rails to learn on. There wasn't really anyone there though cause powder chasing was the name of the game! Monday was more of the same. Fresh snow yet again! Crystal Chair was closed so we spent a lotta time traversing over to the runs to the left of Jersey Cream. Some of those trails were completely untracked and the abundant face shots resembled a Jenna Jameson flick. We hooked up with Dan Treadway for a couple laps and the only thing more entertaining than his mach 10 powder skiing is his redneck stories. They really never end, with tales of squirrel shooting when he was 7, to dismantling fellow sledder's engines for fun. Makes for great chairlift entertaining, that's for sure! Enough of that though, we broke trail to the base in the afternoon to work on the website some more. My plane was to leave several hours later and come back to the real world. Unfortunately, another 20 centimeters of snow were scheduled to make an appearance, so after much convincing (read: delay your flight) from Shane, I made the call to stay another day. Thank the holy almighty because Tuesday was the day!! Totally fresh everywhere, and barely anyone skiing. The only ones on the mountain were the locals, and every local was on the mountain. It was elbows up as everyone raced for the untracked. Shane, Treadway, and I made a short two minute hike up in the Crystal area and found a wide-open playground of fluff. We made the most of the opportunity before others followed by snapping some shots and jumping off anything we could find. We did that for most of the day, traversing further on each run to find more untracked, and really, it was everywhere! What a great way to end my stint in Whistler. It's not every day an Ontario boy can jump a plane to Whistler and enjoy four days of straight powder, but someone has to do it, and I'm glad that it was me. It wasn't all fun and games though as Shane and I punched in hours of work on the new High North site. It's looking pretty dope, so be sure to check it out in the near future (www.highnorthskicamp.com). But hey, who am I kidding, a couple hours of coding for a nerd like me who enjoys it anyway, four days of knee-deep, and some good old fashioned Whistler partying makes for one hell of a weekend, especially when the alternative is sitting in front of lame professors blabbing on about how to make a web page. Huge thanks out to Shane and Amanda for putting me up in their killer place (be sure to congratulate the two next time you're in town. Rumor has it they're taking the plunge this coming February!). Thanks also to Karla, Sara, and Katie at Whistler Blackcomb for letting me ski for nothing! For the latest info on Whistler Blackcomb, check out www.whistlerblackcomb.com or www.ridetribe.com. |
The New Canada's Wonderland [IMG]487381[/IMG] The new Canada's Wonderland. We've got Cliffhanger and Dropzone. HAHAHAHAHA. The park is so sick. So many hits it is actually crazy. The road hazards are on the new AWSM "Highway to Hell Yeah."
As ski seasons wind down around the continent, Whistler is still going strong. I got a chance to check it out first-hand.
Did some earlier this season at Baker...and it was deeeeeeeeeep. Even though it was a winter wonderland, the Desert Sun...[IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/03/09/08/30908.jpeg[/IMG]
Did some earlier this season at Baker...and it was deeeeeeeeeep. Even though it was a winter wonderland, the Desert Sun...[IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/03/09/61/30961.jpeg[/IMG]
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