Adventures in whistler

Well it's 6pm. I'm sitting waiting for the greyhound bus to take me back to Vancouver. I'm in quite a bit of pain but most of it is muscle pain rather than pain caused by one of my 4 crashes.
Crash 1. Too fast on a twisty gravel track, didn't put enough trust in my bike, ran off into a tree
Crash 2. Got involved in a black diamond run where a lot of it was a 50 cm wide elevated wooden track snaking through the forest. I didn't handle the corners well got wobbly fell off an smashed my helmet against a log and bent one finger back badly, suspect it is broken. With the end of a 10cm thick branch almost going through the front of my full face helmet, I consider myself lucky. 1 cm lower and it would have smashed my sunnies
3. Same track, fell off elevated boardwalk again.
4. Super rough section on black course, at low speed tried to put my feet down and bail but ended up getting out of control and stacking

apart from that my wrist, hands , back and knees are aching. I truly learnt what real mountain biking is all about today
I started with a 12 min chair ride up to the first stop on the mountain. After a couple runs on easy trails I go used to the bike and remembered how to ride. It was a few more before I remembered how to jump properly.




This is the very bottom of the mountain, where it meets the vulliage.




I couldn't take photos on the trails. They go down through the forest and are quite furious. Jumps, berms, obstacles, drop offs, walls you name it. It wasn't safe to stop for photos so all the shots I have are on the main ski runs, which are just used as connector trails to get to the mountain bike trails. Once the track drops down into the forest it was insane. I got pretty confident and was geting some serious air.



I went to the top summit at 1800 metres.
This was where the glacier started and there were people with skis and boards getting the lift up to ski the glacier! Such a strange sight in 27 degree heat.




To get here took over 20minutes. It was so far down




On the way back i got lost and ended up screaming straight down a black ski run(not part of the bike trails). I must have been doing easily over 80ks on the rocky surface. Trying to stop was very hairy.
After that I ducked into some of the faster blue runs that had heaps of good jumps.

It took over 40 minutes flat out to get to the botom. The views were amazing and the trails incredible. I haven't had so much adrenalin fun In a long time. When I realized you can just scream down these slopes and the bike figures out the rest I got pretty fast. Having never ridden a downhill Bike I had no idea what it could do. Couple of times I was doing in excess of 60 and hit a ditch but the bike just absorbed it.
I'm a massive fan of downhill now, I'll be back to do this again.







Look carefully above
Coming out of one of the trails onto connector trail





Sleepy busride home. Despite the views across the fjord, sunsetting behind the mountains, I didnte have the energy to take a photo. Just half asleep, enjoying the serenity. Got back to my hotel just after 9. What a fabulous day.