Whistler: Spanky’s Ladder

I can’t believe it’s the ski season of the year after, and I’m catching up with blog posts from last winter! Anyway, like the year before, we headed to Whistler over the Easter long weekend, this time for six days. It’s hard to beat the views there on a sunny day!

Here are some highlights / observations:

Shuttle, Easter, long lines
Our lodging this year was in the centre of Whistler Village. Since it wasn’t close enough to walk, we caught the (free!) shuttle daily. This worked out really well, except that the return shuttles were very oddly spaced out, sometimes leading to long waits. Also, unlike last year, some days involved a wait of around an hour to upload in the morning. We might have to try and avoid Whistler on the Easter long weekend going forward, or at least try to stay in Creekside or near Backcomb Base, which we suspect are less busy.

Aquatic Centre
We had a five day Edge card, but figured that five days straight of skiing might be a bit much. With a forecast of a small scale blizzard on one of the days it was an easy decision to relax at the pool and hot tub at the aquatic centre (at the Meadow Park Sports Centre) instead of skiing.

Re-Use-It Centre
We also finally got a chance to check out the Whistler Re-Use-It Centre. It’s a thrift store with an excellent winter sports section. Due to it being late in the season, there was an additional 50% discount on gear for winter sports. So, after some issues with my set up, I bought some downhill skis and later returned to get boots for an insanely cheap price, something like $30-40 each.

While there, I happened to chat to a guy who I quickly found out was Whistler’s Rabbi. Who knew… Since it was Passover, he offered me some Matzos and Grape Juice, both of which the kids enjoyed.

Eat to Eat
The gondola that connects Whistler and Blackcomb is called the Peak to Peak. It’s a very scenic ride in itself. We caught it with friends on one of the days. They are more hard core than us, and suggested that we use those 12 or so minutes as our lunch break. They re-christened the gondola the “Eat to Eat”. To this day, we refer to the gondola by that name, and have a little chuckle. We’ll stick to a longer and more relaxed break at one of the lodges going forward…

Fondue, chocolate, and tahini
Two other families we are friends with happened to also be up on Whistler over the Easter long weekend. One evening they invited us to have dinner together, a proper cheese fondue, a great treat, and a first time for our kids.

With the dinner invite in hand I offered to make dessert. After a day on the slopes and without much time and energy, I was looking for something simple. Luckily we had a good supply of tahini and I had just picked up several kgs (!) of 70% dark chocolate at an unbelievable discount and brought about 400g with us. I recalled a dead simple chocolate truffles recipe I had been itching to try. It simply involves melting chocolate and mixing it with tahini, in equal weights. Then you pour the mixture into a buttered pan, cool it in the fridge or freezer, slice, and coat with coconut or in our case – cocoa. Store in the fridge since it’s very soft at room temperature. Take out a few minutes before serving, for a better melt-in-your-mouth result. Yum!

Snowboard lesson
The Whistler SchoolKids program provides five free days of skiing to young kids. Friends tipped us off that the program also offers a free full day lesson, with rentals, food, and snacks included, for first time skiers or snowboarders (valued at $299 + tax!). This was a great chance for Neil to try out snowboarding and for us to have some quality time with Kai.

Kids catching the lift by themselves
One of the days we met up with friends on the slopes. Our kids enjoyed skiing together, and it was really fun to see them zooming down the slopes around us. They also really enjoyed catching the lift by themselves, ahead of us.

Spanky’s ladder
I was never attracted to the more advanced terrain on Whistler Backcomb. But Neil was interested in skiing some double black diamond runs… Dutifully, on a sunny day we headed over to Spanky’s Ladder. For many years I had noticed skiers bootpacking up the path in that direction, and finally got to see where they were going.

On this day this area was almost empty, so we had to figure out the route for ourselves. Luckily our Airbnb had a copy of the advanced terrain guidebook, and I had taken a good look in preparation. It was steep but very doable and we took our time finding our way and enjoying the views. The conditions were great, with the soft afternoon spring snow.

At the bottom it was all of a sudden very hot, and we skied out the all familiar track that also leads down from the Blackcomb Glacier. We looked back at our line with satisfaction – it looked steep and impressive! We still had time and energy for another go, but opted for the easier Blackcomb Glacier, one of my favourite runs.