So I can’t tell you much about Whistler’s nightlife, really.

The shops, I can tell you a bit about those. Because I’ve been supplying, there. New pair of goggles, because the gasket was pretty much gone on the ones I’d brought. New headphones because on one run, I tore the cord to shreds on the old ones—probably caught it on a tree. New base layer, new fleece, y’know. So I can report that you can get everything here. But it’s not like you couldn’t have guessed that.

And the restaurants are generally awesome. But you can read about that elsewhere, I’d expect. Me, I could tell you about a couple sushi places, the apparently somewhat famous Araxi, a nice Hy’s steak house, and can generally report: there is very good food here, but otherwise…

See, thing is, beyond eating, sleeping, and resupplying, we really haven’t done much in the village.

The schedule’s been, every day, for four days so far: up at 6:00 am (to the sound of a clock radio playing snow and weather reports), at the lifts by 7:15 or so for the early lift (you pay a bit more for this—they call it ‘Fresh Tracks’)—buffet breakfast at the top, on the slopes as soon as they open them, at 8:05 to 8:15, ride ‘til last lift, at around 3:30 or so—usually with a break for a cappucino in one of the places on the hill at late morning. No lunch, as breakfast, generally, is huge.

Then dinner, hit the hot tub, stick wet gear places it will dry, run vital supply errands, collapse, sleep, repeat.

Like I said, four days of that so far. And we’ve two more planned.

Now you might well wonder: just how do you board for seven or so hours a day on a hill with 11 km runs without destroying your legs? I’m now in a position to explain how I pull this off, anyway:

First, of course, make sure they’re in shape in the first place. I was doing deep knee bends with weights and riding almost nightly for a few hours for more than month prior. Probably helped.

Second: relax, as much as possible. Curling your toes during good sex equals a good sign it was really good. Curling them while riding equals unnecessary. Feet calm, relaxed but poised, no more active than necessary. Yes, work as hard as you must, when you must, to put the board exactly where it needs to be, but don’t get all anxious about it. Just do it.

Third, and I suspect most important: don’t get lazy. Keep carving, keep turning, keep that board swinging around in big, perfect arcs. That juddering, shuddering side-slipping thing that happens if you get lazy/stressed, and let the thing slide sideways to try to slow yourself that way is very costly—hell on joints and muscles. If you do need to bleed off speed, do it the smart way, instead: vary the rhythm, draw the turn out a bit longer, turn a bit farther, but don’t slide sideways. Sliding is bad on a marathon like this, and dangerously tiring. The edges of the board should be cutting through the snow like a hot knife through butter. Also, turning all the time like that spreads out the work over the muscle groups more—doesn’t lean too hard on any fibres in particular… Which reminds me: yes, even on long, looong turns one way or the other—like on long, narrow traverses where you’re going right or left for a long time, keep carving anyway—don’t just take the turn or turns on the edge that works for that direction, or you’ll burn out the muscles you use for that. Carve anyway, even there.

Do it right, in fact, and it becomes less a strength thing, more a cardio workout. I’ll be sweating and breathing a bit harder at the end of a long run or a steep pitch from all that motion. But my legs won’t hurt. Or not much.

Anyway. As to Whistler: it’s been incredible. The first two days we started on fresh powder—‘round 10 cm each day—and I can report: powder is fun, makes doing things which would be suicidal on East coast ice into child’s play. Here I can jump, slip through trees, bounce through monster moguls, whatever. No worries.

(Oh. Yeah. ‘No worries’. You hear that a lot here. There are a lot of Aussies working and visiting here. On Australia day, which was Tuesday, it was nuts. Drunk and just generally cheerful people all over the hill, wearing big blue flags and tattoos. And any other day, the odds the person serving you or running the lift will sound generally Antipodean are pretty good.)

Right. Next two days were less about powder, more about groomed and skiied territory, since not much fell overnight. First one clear and gorgeous—the views are the usual almost unbelievable Canadian rockies postcard perfect. Second one there was a lot of cloud and heavy snow in the alpine—which was gorgeous in a far more dramatic, even more memorable, less postcard way. Sun peeping through all that atmosphere in pale shafts, jagged peaks and outcrops taking on a spectral quality—ghosts appearing and disappearing through a thick mist. Took some pictures, might post ‘em later when facilities are less spartan and I’ve a bit more time. Oh, and winding along narrowish ridge trails with cliffs on both sides in this sort of atmosphere makes that whole ‘relax’ rule up there a bit harder to honour.

We’ve hit pretty much every trail on both mountains, with so much time up there. Couple of the double black bowls on the far side of Blackcomb and the stuff closed for the upcoming Olympics being the only exceptions. Might yet look into those bowls a bit, too. Will see. Plan is to head over to some of the stuff off the glacier chair again if it gets busy Friday and Saturday, as the locals report those runs are generally quiet even then—weekend skiiers like sun, and they don’t get as much there. That’ll put us right next to those bowls, anyway.

And as to the hills, I can safely report, as if you couldn’t already guess, or didn’t already know: they’re incredible. There’s so much to do, so much variety. Long groomed cruisers, steeps on which you can push the sound barrier, enormous mogul fields, huge, off-piste fields of powder, endless glades, it just goes on and on, and at regular intervals you’ll encounter folks equally happily lost in it all. Favourites so far: the Symphony bowl for powder, the stuff off the glacier chair for long, fast runs—I think. Must review. Like I said, there’s so much of it. And just writing that, I get to thinking: but there’s also all this other stuff…

Other bits of boarding minutiae—switch is also useful for resting muscles. Oh, and for going through gladed stuff. Two ways around a tree is way better than one. And boarding through moguls isn’t yet, for me, that much like skiing through ‘em, but then I was never that good with moguls on skis, so I’m not really sure how relevant that is. But I am getting to what feels like a certain facility for this—using the moguls as pivots, on both edges, snaking through ‘em, jumping a bit on the turns, when this is more efficient.

And that’s all for a bit. I’ve got some sleeping to do, for now. I’ll be up early.