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So the girlies and I headed up to Whistler in the begining of January. The 5 days were definitely not enough for us, but we got a good taste of both mountains and the village. Whistler is a must for anyone who loves long runs, great pow, and a village filled with renowned restaurants, bars and clubs.

* Best beer- Whistler Brewhouse pub-4355 Blackcomb Way

A variety of microbrewed beer handcrafted right on site. Try the red truck brew! Beers the size of your head, beer tastings and some damn good grub in the bar. The pesto chicken panini and the artichoke dip hit the spot. They had a fire roaring, and we sat in booths next to the windows watching the snow fall.

* Best Apres ski-Garibaldi Lift Company- Base of the Whistler gondola

The GLC is a must! An outside area with heat lamps, snow porn on the big screen, cuties everywhere, a plethora of beer, and not to mention amazing music! The DJ was playing down tempo on Thursday and we saw a band there on Saturday that did Rock requests. I loved that you can ride right in off of the mountain!

* Best Restaurant-Seven Tapas- Main Street

When you feel like munching out on a bunch of different dishes hit this place! We had the pulled pork sandwhich ( spicy goodness!), a warm spinach salad with walnuts, and chicken satay. We didn’t feel too full when we left, the prices were very reasonable and it is open till midnight. Late night munchies are needed before a night of drinking at the club :)  Don’t want to miss riding because your hung over!!

*Best Nightclub - Garfinkles- Main Street

Thursday night is the night to be here, locals night! A huge dance club, 2 bars, and a horseshoe shaped stage for all you attention mongrels (you know I was up there!). The DJ was spinning hip hop, house, and dance. We shaked our booty’s till closing and actually wound up back there again the next night.

* Best run- Franz’s run- Whistler Mountain

Since the top was closed we set out to find a cruising intermediate run that wasn’t crowded. We found the run of the day! You can access Franz’s by the Whistler village gondola to the top. Take Little Red Run to Franz’s then to Lower Franz’s. The 20 minute run ends at Whistler Creekside which had no lines and was perfect for the stormy day.

We also found another run off of Franz’s called Kadenwood, practically untouched and full of pow! WOOHOO! In between runs we hydrated and danced to the Beastie Boys at Dusty’s backside. I actually wondered if this was the best kept secret of Whistler!?

We’ll be back next year I hope!

Be fierce ladies and always stay in control!

See other pics of our Whistler trip on our Flickr page.

Read more about our Whistler snowboarding trip in our other recaps too.

We met these two at Hennessey’s on Sunday night. They’re skiers (what is it with us meeting skier hotties more often than snowboarder hotties?) and Navy pilots.

(Mark, Leila, Pete, me, and Jessie)

They fly jets for a living - were visiting Mammoth for a ski weekend with the guys. Total adrenaline junkies - they like fast things (both own sports cars and motorcycles.)

(Leila, Pete, and Jess)

They were very fun to talk to and just overall cool guys to hang out with. And lucky for us, they knew the bartender at Auld Dubliner, who lined us up with a round of Rumple Minze. (Wait, is that really lucky? I can still taste that shot…)

(Mark and Leila)

Fun meeting you two - perhaps we’ll see you up in Mammoth again soon!

Our first snowboard trip to Mammoth this season!

Had a great time with Stacey (”Miller Time”), Leila, Stacy C., and of course the Juice.

As usual, we stayed in Viewpoint because of its proximity to the village and the gondola.

We arrived on Friday night and chilled with some wine; made it an early night so we could hit the mountain the next morning and be fully rested. Saturday was a gorgeous bluebird day - not a cloud in the sky and no wind. Mammoth had not had new snow in a week or more but it was pretty cold and so the snow stayed nice; there wasn’t too much ice. The mountain wasn’t even crowded! We got a lot of runs in and capped off the day with a break for beer & bloodies at the Mill Cafe.

Saturday evening was a big night of dancing at Lakanuki, where we pretty much owned the dance floor with our party posse of 5. But first, some shopping at Wave Rave - some new
brown Burton Women’s Rodeo Pants for me!

Sunday was freezing cold and it quite frankly sucked. It was 70MPH winds at the top and the temp was listed at 10. (Check out this video of the wind at the top of Mammoth!) The conditions were bad - flat light, lots of ice, and the aforementioned wind. But, we stayed out for a few hours and got a lot of runs in anyways before calling it a day.

Jessie: “It’s how cold at the top?”

Sunday evening was a fun night out starting at Hennessey’s where we met two new Hotties on the Hill who were Navy pilots and in town for a weekend of skiing. Chilled there for a bit and then headed to the Auld Dubliner for irish music & black and tans and a shot of Rumple Minze courtesy of the very friendly bartender. Yikes!

The ride home was uneventful except for our delicious lunch at our new favorite pit-stop - the Country Kitchen! This place was great - definitely a better bet for stopping for a diner meal on the ride home vs. the crazy-busy Schat’s in Bishop. Check it out sometime!

As usual, a fun trip with a great group. And lots of Hotties on the Hill that we’ll be adding to the site soon. Mammoth, we love you… we’ll be back in two weeks!

Check out photos of our Mammoth snowboarding trip this weekend at our Flickr page.

This recap covers Friday/Sat/Sun of our trip last week… (read part 1 here)

The next two days, we enjoyed continual new snow which just kept falling! On Friday we rode Blackcomb. We really wanted to go up to the top of the hill and go over the backside to the Blackcomb glacier and to the back bowl, but the top was closed due to the storm. We were somewhat near to the top, having taken no less than 4 lifts to get to our first run of the day, and the wind was absolutely pelting us with powerful gusts and driving the snow into our faces – thank god for goggles and face masks. It was very hard to see at times, luckily they mark the trails with orange signs at the left edge of the runs, and blue at the right. Just keep yourself inbetween those two markers as you make your way down the hill and you won’t end up off a cliff! Needless to say, we did not go back up to the top of the Exelerator chair due to these conditions.

(Gracie and Jessie in line, and already snow is accumulating on them!)

Further down from these freezing winds, we rode up and down the Solar Express a few times. The snow was really nice here and it was a fun blue/blue-black run that wasn’t too tracked out or bumpy. In some places there were rocks exposed – weird because of the amount of snow that had fallen. I was pleasantly surprised by the small # of people on the hill – it certainly wasn’t like mammoth which gets so busy in places. Maybe the snowfall and wind kept people inside? But it was great for us!

Saturday we went back to Whistler Mountain and were stunned that it was STILL snowing… we noticed when we got up that it had pretty much slowed to a light flurry, but then when we made our way up to the gondola to take our first run of the day, it was once again thick, heavy flakes that quickly added up to a new layer of snow on the sidewalks. And the mountain itself was covered with at least 8″ of freshies.

Each run that we did still had areas of untracked powder although our favorite runs of Thursday (Franz’s) were pretty packed-powder and a little icy in places. Definitely not as good as Thurs. conditions. However, we discovered a secret trail under the Whistler gondola – following the signs to Kadenwood, we ended up on a little pathway that had nobody on it, and was just one of those windy, cruisy runs through the trees, thick with powder. Once the run dumped us out of the trees onto a wide run, we were on the skier’s left of the gondola and found these undiscovered areas where there were nobody else. This is where we really found the powder. Both Jessie and I managed to get stuck in it a few times but for the most part it was light, fluffy, and at least 12″ deep or more in places. This really felt like the run of the day, so like Costanza, I “ended on a high note” and took the gondola back up to make my way back to the Village for another après session at the GLC. The gals met me later for beers and we watched the in-house band, the Hair Farmers for a while, and headed home for rest, hot tubbing, and primping for the evening’s dance festivities.

(Jessie, me, and Gracie always ending on a high note at the GLC)

All in all, I really enjoyed Whistler. First off, it was fun to be in another country to go snowboarding. Having just been to Australia two months ago, it was cool to be surrounded by mostly non-Americans. We met a handful of Americans, all from Seattle (it’s only a few hours drive, comparable I think to Los Angelenos driving to Mammoth.) Mostly we met Canadians, and TONS of Aussies. Everybody was really nice – surprisingly so! On Friday, I even got run into by some douchebag on the mountain who was out of control, but he stopped and apologized and made sure I was OK. Unfortunately, I can’t say that about most riders at Mammoth and Snow Summit!

Another random act of Whistler kindness – on one of the traverses, I was about to stall out when a friendly skier cruised by me and goes “grab my pole!” She pulled me out past the flats and I made it without having to stop. How cool was she?

The village is awesome; as I mentioned, it is a huge village and not just a few blocks of stores. I love that the entire town is more or less easily walkable even in the snow. Once you’ve made your way from your condo into the village, you can meander through and shop or eat without getting snow on your pretty little head – because the walkways are under the 2nd-level businesses in each building (the stores are set back from the open-air.)

(Jessie in the Village, going shopping)

Prices in the restaurants and bars were comparable to LA. And there’s a good range of choices for dining – from cheap-but-delicious made to order burgers at the Splitz Grill, to nice high-end sushi. Music in the bars ranged from standard American top 40 dance music to hip-hop to European style-house… sometimes in the same night! It was definitely interesting last night at the Savage Beagle, when the dj mixed in “Shout” and “Tequila” to the mix of Euro anthems. (But that did give us a chance to do our best pee-wee herman moves.)

As we left today, we saw our first peek of blue sky in the entire 4 days of our stay… looked like it was shaping up to be a beautiful bluebird day! But we got some great riding in, and sampled a lot of what Whistler had to offer. I’ll definitely be back!

Want more about our Whistler trip?
- Read Part 1 of my recap
- View our pics on Flickr
- Watch videos on YouTube

Created a Flickr account to show and share our snowboarding photos and memories from the season. Check out our photos from our recent snowboarding trip to Whistler, Canada!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/snowboard-women/

Here is Noah - we met him on one of our favorite runs from Thursday, Franz’s, on Whistler. He actually volunteered to take pics of me and Jess as we struggled to get some good mountain scenery.  He’s a skier, but we don’t care, he’s still a hottie!

Age: 26
From: Toronto, Canada
Been skiing for 15 years

Nice meeting you Noah!

Jessie and I have been in Whistler since Wed. Jan 2. Have limited internet connectivity so will try and post when we can… here is a recap of the first two days…

After an arduous 12-hour travel day (unbelievable, since Vancouver is only 2:15 away from LAX… I’ll post later about my experience with Snowbus… don’t use them!) I finally met up with the girls in the Whistler condo that we rented. We’re staying in a really nice 2BR condo with our own hot tub, in the Main Street area, a close 10 minute walk to the Whistler Village.

Whistler must be the biggest “village” I’ve ever been to. Vail doesn’t count because it’s like 3 separate villages spread across the Lionshead/Vail area… but this is truly a village – cute brick-paved walkways and interconnected storefronts, lit up with cute lights and hundreds of fellow snow-lovers cruising around at night. It’s packed with entertainment options - about 30+ bars/restaurants to choose from. And countless stores! There is even a Burton women’s store – I’ll have to check that out & review it later.

This first night, I didn’t go out as I was exhausted from traveling and I wanted to be in top form for the first day on the mountain. But not to worry – Jessie will be posting a rundown of her favorite nightspots here soon.

We got up bright and early on Thursday Jan 3 and were out the door by 8:45. Walking all the way to the Blackcomb and Whistler gondolas takes about another 5 minutes, so we were in the gondola for the first ride by 9:15. Did I mention that it had begun snowing, hard, and didn’t let up all day long? We stayed on the Whistler side today and unfortunately ran in to a ton of god-awful traverses that killed my legs for the rest of the day. But the snow kept coming down… the runs were covered with feathery snow about 12” deep of fresh powder in places. It wasn’t too tracked-up either – we went down Ptarmigan and Franz’s run quite a few times, noted as the “run of the day” by the lifty’s. Overall, it was not too busy and a lot of great snow. The runs are so long here!

The funniest moment of the day was when Jessie and I were riding in the Whistler Creek gondola, and suddenly we heard a big THUD. Jessie screamed “like a little bitch” and then we heard cackling from down below – some little kids beaned us with a snowball and hit the gondola car! We both started cracking up when we realized it was just those kids and yelled out “little bastards!”

We got in a bunch of great riding though… it was a good warm-up day. The constant snowfall made for challenging vision at times, but the snow was so nice that hitting unexpected bumps wasn’t too bad for the riding.

At the end of the day, we enjoyed a few après-ski beers at the GLC – cool place with great service and a female (yeah!) DJ spinning trip-hop, downtempo, and a little big beat. I gotta say,Whistler was a nice change for havoing almost no classic rock! I actually heard Travis, Keane, Pearl Jam and Alice and Chains so far.

More later on today (Friday)’s riding! It has snowed ALL DAY and is still snowing as we speak… at 9:30 tonight! I think we’ve received a foot of fresh pow…. great conditions. Here’s me and Jessie at the end of our day today, finishing up on Blackcomb…

Saturday I woke up at 5:45 and hit the road at 6:45 to drive to Big Bear where I was meeting Cheryl and her husband Eric for a morning of practice/warmup riding before my snowboarding trip to Whistler in a little under two weeks.

(here comes Cheryl)

We were pleasantly surprised by the conditions! They had made a bunch of snow and there was at least two feet of coverage on all the open runs. (Coloradans and others, please don’t mock us about our lack of snow here in the local mountains)

(snowmaking machines below Chair 5)

The temperature was like Goldilocks’ porridge - not too hot and not too cold, just right! Runs were a teeny bit icy in places but for the most part it was as good as it gets at Snow Summit. Plus, there were NO crowds… we think everybody was getting in a last day of Christmas shopping! What a pleasant surprise.

Bonus… we left before 1pm so we got the “Getaway voucher” for $19 off our next ticket. All in all, a great day at Snow Summit!

(pizza & beer after our riding.)