Whistler Trip

by Aidan Bishop.......

 

 

After the Worlds most British took the opportunity to go and sample the delights of Whistler, BC. Having known of it’s reputation I was very excited to go and ride the popular resort. Myself and Neil Arnold packed up our hire car and headed out of Sun Peaks Sunday morning with Pagey, Mrs Pagey and Dave Garland in tow.

On the way out of town a few KM the fuel light came on (luckily down a hill)…good start!!
A pretty awesome 4hr drive through some stunning scenery and we were at Whistler, and what a town, very clean and picturesque. We pulled up in the main town centre and were faced by the bike park, which to look up at looked crazy, full of seemingly massive jumps everywhere and box jumps and other features used for freeride comps. Having a quick wonder around town the first of many very attractive bar staff gave us a free starter card, so we had our first pint in the Irish pub (there’s always one isn’t there!) with our free spicy chicken wings!

 

 

A large amount of our trip was left to fate, and as such we hadn’t booked any accommodation for whistler, but we did have a contact number for some of Andy Bostock’s friends who were staying that week and had room…result! Unfortunately when we were getting fuel Neil took down Nigel’s number on the piece of paper and then left the paper in the car as we were on the journey over!! After circling town several times (don’t get me wrong the view was superb!) we started to get a little anxious as to whether we were going to find Nigel so we could ring the number. Finally we bumped into Sion Jones & Co who had seen Nigel and they were meeting for dinner…thank god! A tasty Mongolian grill for dinner and many drinks later we checked Nigel’s car for the paper……No sign of it….bugger!

 

 

Oh well, not to be put off we partied on. The popular Longhorn saloon was situated at the base of the chairlift and was staffed with the fittest waitresses I’ve seen in a long time! It was Bank Holiday weekend so the bar was rammed, I managed to meet up with team mate Phil Mowatt who was steaming drunk, with the other Brits a good night was had by all. A mission had been of course to find somewhere to sleep, we had managed to sort some beds in a hostel through a couple of friendly Canadian girls, but we chatted to some others late into the morning and found ourselves hotel hopping trying to book a room or sleep in their foyer…. Alas we awoke in our car!!

Monday morning started with a hearty breakfast, earlier than it should have been but still damn nice! So it was time to ride as we didn’t want to waste riding time with details like finding somewhere to sleep! As we were getting the bikes ready and kitting up I thought I would have a good look for that piece of paper…it was under the passenger seat all along!!! (nice one Neil!)

 

 

We sorted lift passes for the week and met up with Sion, Anthony Oates, James Roberts and Si Paton. Si had been there for 3 days before racing at Sun Peaks so he knew his way around a bit and so led us for the day. We started on the infamous ‘A’ Line trail, as most turned out to be it was awesome! It went something like fast corner table top, berm, tabletop, berm jump berm jump jump jump berm jump jump berm jump berm berm jump jump jump berm hip jump berm, etc. What a great track, and this is used as a warm up trail!! At the bottom we met up with Pagey and a couple of American racers, Lars Tribus and Todd someone for the rest of the days riding. It turned out to be a fantastic days riding, trying out so many different types of trails, open ones with jumps and berms, to some of the most technical singletrack I’ve ever ridden.

After riding Si pointed us in the direction of Ticket2RideBC, a UK biking adventure holiday company based in Whistler, who had a spare room in one of their lodges and kindly let us stay there (many thanks Scott). If anyone is interested in going it would be worth contacting these guys, they have a good set up with an on site mechanic and sort out a variety of day trips to other riding spots in BC, you’ll be in good hands.

 

 

That night we had a well overdue shower that was heaven, we felt human again and ready for some more beer. The rest of the week we rode a fair amount, with so much variety on the mountain you can ride what you want, a run down from the top of the mountain will probably take you 30mins linking all sorts of trails along the way. We often rode and I can recommend:

Freight train
In Deep
Goats Gully
A Line
Dirt Merchant
D1
Original Sin
Schleyer
Joyride
Too Tight
Duffman
Crabapple hits
Angry Pirate
Bear cub

And there’s plenty more!!!

 

 

Highlights of the week for me were Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night!! The days were good fun too!! Log running by a nudist jetty by a lake! Hot tubbing in hotel pools after hours! Hip jump on freight train (see pic), wall ride on freight train (pic) and many more.

I could happily live there, what a town!!!!!!