Whistler

I got a lift from Squamish to Whistler, the famed ski resort just in time to catch the end of the ski season. For the first two nights I camped at Lakeside camp ground which was freezing and so moved to the lovely Fireside Lodge. After spending a small fortune on a lift pass and hire equipment for the day I headed up the mountain, reaching the top of the second lift I realised I had no idea which direction to go in or what was open, it was also quite foggy and slightly surreal due to the lack of people. It was the first time up a ski mountain I actually wanted more people, just so I couldn't follow them and hopefully not get lost. After a 5 minutes of hanging around, reading signs but having no idea where 'Zig zag, Jersey Cream, or Green line' would take me, I saw some folk heading into the mist so I followed them, and from then on it was heaven. After just a few minutes whilst stopping to read some more signs, I met Patreece and Simon who became my guides for the rest of the day, good thing too as the whole place is vast despite most of it being closed now - for someone used to the wind blown barren volcanoes of New Zealand and the icy scraps of Scotland, this was some kind of heaven. Simon thought it was totally crap but he'd obviously been spoilt by having skied in one of the best places on earth for several years running, and Patreece, an ex ski racer, lived for skiing. It turned out they were staying at Fireside Lodge also and encouraged me to stay there, I said I didn't need any encouragement as camping for flipping freezing.

The next day I walked around town and out to Lost Lake, getting lost of the way. I was thinking about doing some cycling the next day so checked out the hire costs but was also tempted to push the boat out and have another days skiing instead if I could find cheaper hire. Upon moving to the lodge, Mark the assistant manager offered some spare skis and boots a friend of his left, the boots fitted and the skis were the right height so another days skiing it was, free gear hire, woop woop!

So for my last day in Whistler, Myself, Mark- whose day off it was (he only works 2 days a week, the lucky sod), and Patreece went up the mountain again, the weather was sunny but the conditions lower down which were bliss 2 days earlier were now heavy and sticky - a completely different kettle of fish, higher up was still good but the snow quick hard and icy in the morning, I didn't mind that, used to skiing on ice.
During the day Patreece kept bumping into people he knew, Whistler it appeared was almost like a big club, whereby the same people come here each season and generally bump into each other quite a lot. Unfortunately for Mark, all the older dudes wanted to give him advice on his skiing, he was a fine skier anyway, in my humble view, at least that meant the radar was off me. Still he didn't seem to mind. Patreece was very complimentary about my skiing, I think he was impressed the first day when every time he stopped and looked round for me, I was right behind him. One of the group did tell me 'you ski like a girl' to which I replied 'I am a girl!'. You can't really argue with that.
The lower slopes completely drained me, and I was totally pants but the time we got back to the lodge, I was glad to have a nice shower and relax in the evening sun with the group out on the deck. Of course most of the conversation was about skiing, during which Mark fell asleep and Simon was playing with his ipad.

Notes and thoughts:

• It's common to see bears roaming about on the cycle paths around the town.
• There are hardly any people skiing at the end of the season here.
• The campground is a few kilometers out of town, cost $21.
• A day pass at this time of the season was $65, ski and boot hire $55. (An end of season pass would be much better value if staying for a while).
• Also lots of good mountain biking in the area.

Squamish

Squamish is famed for the big granite monolith called The Chief, popular with hikers and climbers. Josie and Christain dropped me off at Squamish on their way to Whistler for the long weekend. I found a very nice place to stay called The Inn on the Water, which is one of the nicest hostels I've stayed, it's more of a hotel really with very nice dorm rooms, I had my dorm to myself for the last 2 nights there.
I met up with Wes for some climbing on the saturday - I'd contacted some people through a climbers website for people looking for other climbers and found Wes who lives in Squamish, or The Squish as he referred to it, and did some crack climbing at an area called Smoke Bluff. It's all crack climbing here and mostly trad, also met Larrissa who Wes had been climbing with the day before also and we finishing climbing as it was getting dark and went out for dinner at a nice place right next to the river.
The next day was too wet for climbing so I hiked up The Chief instead, being a bank holiday it was quite busy. It's a steep hike up with lots of steps but the views from the top are rewarding. The guy who runs the hostel later told me they had closed the area a few weeks ago as a cougar was in the area - it had taken a ladies dog, but a guy with a dog ignored the warnings and went up anyway and the cougar took his dog too.

The next day was raining hard so spent the time at the swimming pool along with half the town, it was their bank holiday and everyone was thinking the same thing. Later on it turning out someone from the hostel was travelling onto Whistler the next day I could get a ride with him. He just needed to buy a car first, he'd met a guy at the tourist information centre who was selling his Jeep so the timing seemed perfect, we planned to leave around 11am on the Tuesday, or so we thought. Being an old, cheap car it of course didn't start and had some problems so Tuesday was spent making several laps of Squamish town trying to get it fixed. It's currently at the garage, hopefully it'll be fixed by the time I've updated this blog. We'll see. Old cars, the ghost of Our Kez comes back to haunt, at least it wasn't my car this time!

Notes and thoughts:

• 'Our Kez' was a Mitsubishi Magna bought in Perth, Australia for a big road trip of the country, it broke down before we got out of Perth, and several more times after that.
• The Chief, also known as Stawamus Chief is a granite dome over 700 m/ 2,297 ft high with three summits.
• Locals sometimes refer to Squamish as 'The Squish'.

Victoria

This week I have mostly been cycling around Victoria. They have wee roads just for cycling, they're away from the main roads so don't become parking lanes. I discovered you can get to places very quickly when you don't have to worry about traffic and hills. Plus all the traffic has to give way to people on the cycle paths when they cross a road, as it should be. On Tuesday I cycled out to Fort Rodd Hill and Fisgard Lighthouse on a cycle path called The Goose, I spend 3 hours there wandering around the ramparts, it was so peaceful and nice to have been able to cycle out there so easily.
On another path I cycled up to a place called Mattick's Farm, that wasn't a farm at all but a row of converted stables now specialising in scented candles and fluffy things, the tea room was packed but just opposite was a store that contained every yummy thing in the world.
Victoria itself is quite touristy at it's heart, it has red London buses, white horse pulled carriages and tour buses with the Union Jack all over them.Good for the colonies to remember where they came from. haa.
Leaving today back over the ferry to the mainland and then on to Squamish.

Notes and thoughts:

Victoria has dedicated cycle lanes separate from the roads, they are very safe to cycle on and most enjoyable.

Sim City

On the Seabus arriving into the North Shore

Vancouver is very civilized. It's very clean, tidy, and car drivers are courteous, it's a good place to walk around. The business district was very quiet today with only a few cars and people about, but as soon as we got the main shopping street, people and traffic just seemed to appear like in Sim City only to  disappear again the next block over. It's odd seeing a city without cars.

Today myself, Josie and Chrissy walked into town and got the seabus across to the north shore and then a bus to a nice park called Lynn Park with lots of tall pine trees, lakes and people riding bikes. Today was much warmer, like a proper summer day, looks like I arrived at the right time and good  weather seems set to continue.  Tomorrow we'll have a wander round Stanley Park and then I'll head over to Victoria on the ferry to Vancouver island with Josie.

Notes:

• Vancouver is very nice, extraordinarily civilized*
• Got my SIM working, sim card that is. My new (cheap) smart phone can actually be smart now.
• Josie still loves walking 
• Drivers in Canada are very courteous to pedestrians crossing the road

*Except for a bunch of about 15 blokes having an across the street argument last night, it was a 4 way intersection and they kept crossing over shouting at each other, just a lot of puffing out of chests.

Arrived in Vancouver

3 countries, 19 hours in the air, 13 hours hanging around airports, 1 migraine, 2 laps of LAX airport and several episodes of Top Gear later I finally arrived at my destination - Vancouver. First discoveries were, Vancouver airport is very nice, quite similar to Hong Kong and Singapore airports, even has a big waterfall, second thing was my phone's SIM didn't work, so the next hour was spent trying to find a local SIM, after enquiring at a bunch of local operators I got one that was meant to work in my phone, it didn't. Thankfully I had made an estimate time of arrival and agreed a location with Chrissy, my Vancover contact and after a nail biting 40 minutes at the said station with no way of contacting her, no map and no tea, we located each other. Relief.

Notes and thoughts:

• Transiting passengers going via LAX airport have to go through immigration control, there are 100 booths and some officials to direct you to the correct ones, don't listen to them, they have no idea. You will also have a small dog come and sniff you.
• The best way to kill time in LAX is to leave the airport, cross the road go to the furthest point and there is a nice park.
• It takes 25 minutes to walk a lap of LAX.
• Qantas seats are nice, but the airline steward staff are short sighted.
• Thank goodness for Top Gear