does it ever rain in Seattle?
This weekend is supposed to be the best snowboarding days of this already amazing season here in the Pacific Northwest. I’ll be spending Friday and Saturday riding all over Whistler and Blackcomb. Yaaaaahhh!
I went snowboarding this weekend at the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics. It had not been snowing for the previous few days prior to my trip but the snow was still very good. Arrived there at around 1100 and i have never seen the parking lot at Whistler that full. Other than a 15-minute break i took before i took the last run down the mountain, i was riding up and down Blackcomb. The better runs of the day were all around the Seventh Heaven area.
Just as i was about to take off to head back to Vancouver at around 1630, a teenage girl came by and told us that Highway 99 was closed by the police because of a serious accident and it would not be open until 1830. I didn’t really believe her until i was filling up my car at Squamish and the Korean gas station owner told me about it. After trying to spend some time in Squamish, i took off toward Vancouver before 1800. About a mile after passing the Museum of Mining, the traffic came to a complete halt. Every few minutes, there would be 3 or 4 cars coming north-bound from the opposite direction, but the south-bound traffic was completely stopped. Most of the cars turned off the engine. Originally, i thought we would start moving at around 1900. Well, we did, but for less than 50 feet. My thought was the 50 feet that i moved was probably due to cars moving up to take up the space left behind by the vehicles that decided to turn around. At around 2100, the south-bound traffic finally started moving.
The accident that caused the Sea-to-Sky highway to be closed for 8 hours was pretty serious. One motorcyclist, among a group of three, was thrown into the path of an oncoming SUV and he was killed instantaneously. The second motorcyclist was stuck under a full-size pickup truck for about half an hour before he was finally pulled out. The third motorcyclist was unhurt. According to an eyewitness, the three motorcyclists were “driving like idiots“.
It seemed like this trip is a little more eventful than all my past visits to Vancouver. On my way to Vancouver on Friday night, i got a call from my sister that the US-Canada border might not be open because of some perceived “terrorist threats”. Turned out it was because the Canadian Border Services agency received a warning from their US counterpart about a possible “armed and dangerous man” heading that direction, according to this report on the Seattle PI. Because the Canadian border guards are unarmed, they promptly left their posts after being notified. But fortunately for me, by the time i arrived near the border crossing at Pacific highway, four lanes were opened so i did not have to wait long.
I have been so busy with work the last few weeks that i even missed a snowboarding trip to Whistler! The record snowfall for the month of January at Whistler made it an even harder pill to swallow. So, Whistler this weekend…anyone?
With the amount of snow dumped on the Cascades this week, it would have been a crime to miss out on the great snow. It snowed all the way from near Everett to Stevens Pass. I witnessed a couple of wrecks on route to Stevens Pass, including a Grand Jeep Cherokee with its rear bumper in the concrete divider and a burned out sedan (i could not even tell the make and model of the car because there was nothing but an empty frame that remained).
The snow could not have been better. Other than a few patches of icy spots, i would say about 95 percent of the runs were nice and powdery. One of the things i needed more practice are ungroomed steep runs with tons of bumps. I can say that after this, i am a little more confident in handling those runs.
I have been waiting for this day since late March. Yesterday, i went snowboarding with Tom and Tracy. This is probably one of the earliest openings for Crystal Mountain. This is certainly the earliest opening for me. The snow was great - it was powdery and soft. Unlike last season, there was very little icy areas. It took me a few runs to get used to that feeling again, after all, i had not worked on those muscles for more than 7 months! Still, being the oldest in the group, i was quite a bit slower than Tom and Tracy - they had to wait for me most of the time :).
After the disastrous previous year, i think this is going to be a really good year for snowboarders.