Blue Mountain Ski Trip
Winter is my least favourite season. But aside from freezing rain and frost-biting windchill, the arrival of Old Man Winter does bring something to cheer about — it is skiing season again!
This ski trip to Blue Mountain almost didn’t happen. Many people showed interest when I brought up the idea of skiing over the weekend, but only to back out at the last moment. The standard excuses were given — too much work, too little money, or both. We’ve decided to make it a day trip to save both time and money, but this failed to convince most people to change their minds. Fortunately, Jay managed to convince Christine to come along and Joseph finally confirmed that he would be going a day before we set off.
Although we have set the date for this ski trip some time ago, we were pleasantly surprised that the weather started to turn warmer after a week of harsh frost-biting cold. Apparently we were not the only ones taking advantage of the mild weather, and we found Blue Mountain jammed packed with people. We took nearly half an hour to find a parking spot — which almost never happens in land-abundant rural Canada — and another hour to rent our equipment. Long queues had already formed in front of the ski lifts by the time we were ready to hit the slopes, and we probably spent more time waiting in line than skiing.
Everyone seemed to be picking up skiing or snowboarding much faster than me; Howe had only snowboarded twice before this trip, and already he was carving down blue slopes without much difficulty. For those unfamiliar with the difficulty rating for ski slopes, the sign for the beginner slopes is coloured green, while the intermediate and expert slopes are coloured blue and black respectively.
A cool $50 million was invested by Intrawest, the corporation that developed and operates Whistler, in an attempt to transform Blue Mountain into a world-class ski resort. The newly completed resort village was one of the many new projects started with the help of this new infusion of cash.
With so many eateries at the resort village, we were surprised that most of the restaurants were fully booked. Hungry and tired, we had to trudge around the village with our clunky ski equipment looking for food. We finally managed to get a table at one of the grill bars, but it was right beside the front door — where the cold wind blows. After stuffing ourselves with overpriced burgers and enjoying a cool mug of Molson Canadian, it was another two hours of fun at the slopes before we made our way back home.
Perhaps my life isn’t that boring after all.