Text messages have been swapped with Ali Williamson, because Lisa has invited us to her family cabin in Whistler, but it turns out that she is already on the flight home so we have to think again. We have a hire car, one of those “Voyager” type things, which has automatic buttons to open the boot and the slidey doors at the side. You can imagine how well this goes down with the kids – there’ always someone ready to offer to open the doors for us, and we all know what a ghastly job that can be.
So we decide to drive through Vancouver and hammer it up to Whistler that same evening. The drive itself is probably two hours at the most, and gives Sarah time to organise somewhere for us to stay, on the hoof. I can’t remember how she does this, either by phone or on the web, but we arrive at some terrific and reasonably priced hotel (Pan Pacific Village Centre) with a suite about the size of our whole house. This would be a good place to spend a week skiing, but I guess the price probably goes up a bit then. We have gas fires in each room, a hoofing great living area, kitchen, and two enormous double beds, so we end up staying here for 2 nights in the end.
Whistler in the summer is a top fun – we rent bikes, we go climbing, we go shopping for gear (this is OK, this is not “normal shopping”), we eat sushi, and generally gad about the place. Biking was tremendous fun – Sarah, Jemima and Eliza had their own bikes, while Monty and I shared one with one of those tow things, and there are mountain bike tracks galore.
We spend almost an entire day riding around, stopping here and there for pranks and photos, getting lost and found, then back to Whistler for food and afternoon beer in the sun.
I go into one of my dreamy phases when I spy a downhill bike rental place. They kit you up, body armour and all, and send you up the skilifts to the top of a huge range of downhill runs ranging from beginner (blue) to psycho (red) ending up at insane (black). I have a look at some of these and no self-respecting almost 40 yr old would do anything other than blue. They have names like “Monkey Hands”, “Samurai Pizza Cat”, “Drop-in Clinic”, “The Test of Metal”, “GearJammer”, and “No Duff”. Looking at the kids who are doing the black runs, they are all teenagers or in their early 20s. I guess anyone older than this has had a bad fall and doesn’t do it anymore. I wish I was 20 again, but since I’m not, decide to give the downhill bike rental a miss. Haslemere friend Woody bought a downhill bike to do the MegAvalanche in Alpe D’Huez and came back with broken ribs and a story about someone he met who fell off and broke his leg on the first steep pitch, then someone ran over the other one and that broke too, putting him off-games for 6 months. Enthused by this, Woody went out and ebayed himself a new downhill bike, only to break his wrist on the first jump down at Rogate.
I decide to go out and do some cross-country instead.
So I wake up at 5am the next morning and take Sarah’s basic MTB out for a spin (mine still has a tow attached). I head for the Last Lake Loop, and rides in that area with more sensible names like “Captain Safety”. Given that I am unlikely to meet anyone else around at the time, I don’t want to risk too much although I do end up falling off a few times. There is “White Gold”, “Ho Chi Minh Trail” and many many others. New ones are being built all the time – cracking bits of single track with no long ups or downs, just rolling and winding. Eventually, it begins to get a bit lighter, and I see joggers and the odd dog-walker on the main trails between the MTB loops. I also see (or rather, hear) a chap coming from some way off. He is singing and ringing his bell. I assume that he is insane.
But shortly afterwards, I realised that he probably wasn’t insane. In fact, it might have been me who was short of a few. As I came roaring around one corner (my guidemap advised “descend the naturally technical foreplay trail back into the Lost Lake area”) I ran smack into a large Black Bear. Now I didn’t actually hit it, but it was damn close. I was riding extremely fast, and by the time I rammed my brakes on I was only 20 feet away. Now I’m as happy to see a Black Bear in the wild as the next man, but by the time I stopped I can only have been 5 or 6 feet away, so there was not much that I could do other than emit a rather pained groan as I glided nearer and nearer. But bizarrely (or perhaps this happens all the time to this bear) it didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. He was big fellow, no doubt about that, much much bigger than I thought they were, but this one was not aggressive in the slightest. He looked at me, and I looked away as you are supposed to do and started walking back up the trail the way I had come, and then he just strolled off into the brush. I watched him for a while, as long as I could from the trail, as he wandered through the brush, digging a bit here and there, grubbing there, making quite a racket as he went. Thank goodness I came across a gentle one.
After that, I was a little more circumspect about the speed at which I took the trails, which took some of the fun out of it frankly. I decided to head back home, although before doing so, resolved to find the start of the famous “Comfortably numb” 24km black run. I found this with no trouble, and went along it for a few hundred yards. It was technically very difficult – narrow, with many roots, and had really dark impenetrable brush on either side. After my bear experience, I decided that this trail was one to do with some company, so I turned back and headed home.
The team was only just getting up, having had a late one at a Sushi Bar the night before. We pack (again, this is getting painful), then head over to the climbing wall so the kids can get rid of a bit of energy. This proves a massive success. There is no one else there, so we are left to our own devices. Using the autobelay devices (I need one of these for the garden) the kids charge up and down the various routes for a couple of hours. Of course I am proud Dad, and maybe all kids can climb like cats at this age, but they really did do well.
We noted that during the evenings, this climbing centre does supervised sessions for families called “Climb and dine” whereby the kids go climbing and the adults go off and have dinner. Now that’s what I call clever thinking.
We then down the mountain in the Voyager towards the ferry station, and our last destination, Vancouver Island.
