BC Bike Trip 3
10/09/11 13:54
Whistler seems to be all things to all people. They have an excellent network of non-intimidating beginner trails. There is the best pump track I have ever seen. They have numerous jump tracks, some of which are so big that they only open them to pro riders during contests, but others of which are much more user-friendly. The intermediate trails cover all the bases, steep, fast, flowing, technical, jumps, roots; you name it. Then there is the stuff that rightly makes Whistler famous world wide: the expert runs. The black diamond runs range from flowing and fast to fairly intimidating and technical. None of them, however, are stupid-hard. That category is reserved for the double black diamond runs. These are world-class difficult. Long, twisting wooden skinnies in the air, steep rock drops, jumps including step-ups and mega-drops, gap jumps, and the list is much more extensive.
There are three lift options. First you should go up Fitzsimmons chair to access the original park that opened back in 1998. Runs like A-line, Ninja Cougar and Dirt Merchant are all serviced by this lift.
The second option is the Whistler gondola. It starts from the same village section as the chair, and drops you either at roughly the same spot up on the hill or takes you way up to near the very top of the Whistler area (you can also catch it from the top of Fitzsimmons and go up from there should you want to do it that way).
Finally there is the Garbanzo chair. It starts where Fitzsimmons ends and goes up more than twice the vertical to deposit you at the top of all the upper runs (there is one sole run from the top of the gondola to the top of Garbanzo which is fun but nothing special - it is the view that really rewards on this lift). Garbanzo zone provides Freight Train, Blue Velvet and quite a few other spectacular black diamond and blue square runs. Freight Train/No Joke (this latter run is not a continuous separate run - it diverges and merges with Freight Train all the way down) is probably my favourite ride at Whistler. Probably.
It is quite easy to ride just the bottom lift. This is roughly the same vertical descent as Silver Star or Thredbo - about 300 metres. There are tons of trails and virtually all of them are fun.
It is also quite possible to spend the day just doing Garbanzo. It is, however, easy to miss the bottom and end up back in the village if you aren’t careful - several of the trails work out that way. This one has nearly 700 metres of vertical to offer.
However you slice it Whistler is big with nearly 1000 metres of descent from top to bottom (just over the 1 kilometre mark if you start at the top of the gondola - which we only rode once).
On the other hand it is really busy. Near to Vancouver it is easy to drive up for a single day of riding. Silver Star and Sun Peaks are much further from any such population. Whistler was only really “bad” at lunch time on weekends, but it is vaguely disappointing after the lack of crowds at the other places. It is also much rougher than I expected - the sheer number of wheels running over the dirt just rips it apart. No maintenance schedule can deal with the volume of riders. Add to that the late spring and heavy rains of early summer and we had lots of ruts, braking bumps and exposed rock to deal with that I didn’t expect.
No trip would be complete without a visit to Whistler, but I think it is also necessary to try some other hills as well.
There are three lift options. First you should go up Fitzsimmons chair to access the original park that opened back in 1998. Runs like A-line, Ninja Cougar and Dirt Merchant are all serviced by this lift.
The second option is the Whistler gondola. It starts from the same village section as the chair, and drops you either at roughly the same spot up on the hill or takes you way up to near the very top of the Whistler area (you can also catch it from the top of Fitzsimmons and go up from there should you want to do it that way).
Finally there is the Garbanzo chair. It starts where Fitzsimmons ends and goes up more than twice the vertical to deposit you at the top of all the upper runs (there is one sole run from the top of the gondola to the top of Garbanzo which is fun but nothing special - it is the view that really rewards on this lift). Garbanzo zone provides Freight Train, Blue Velvet and quite a few other spectacular black diamond and blue square runs. Freight Train/No Joke (this latter run is not a continuous separate run - it diverges and merges with Freight Train all the way down) is probably my favourite ride at Whistler. Probably.
It is quite easy to ride just the bottom lift. This is roughly the same vertical descent as Silver Star or Thredbo - about 300 metres. There are tons of trails and virtually all of them are fun.
It is also quite possible to spend the day just doing Garbanzo. It is, however, easy to miss the bottom and end up back in the village if you aren’t careful - several of the trails work out that way. This one has nearly 700 metres of vertical to offer.
However you slice it Whistler is big with nearly 1000 metres of descent from top to bottom (just over the 1 kilometre mark if you start at the top of the gondola - which we only rode once).
On the other hand it is really busy. Near to Vancouver it is easy to drive up for a single day of riding. Silver Star and Sun Peaks are much further from any such population. Whistler was only really “bad” at lunch time on weekends, but it is vaguely disappointing after the lack of crowds at the other places. It is also much rougher than I expected - the sheer number of wheels running over the dirt just rips it apart. No maintenance schedule can deal with the volume of riders. Add to that the late spring and heavy rains of early summer and we had lots of ruts, braking bumps and exposed rock to deal with that I didn’t expect.
No trip would be complete without a visit to Whistler, but I think it is also necessary to try some other hills as well.