Olympia 2002: Whistler - The Return

5/13/02 - Ahh...Whistler. We couldn't resist and went back up to the fair country of Canada (or Canudia, as Greg kept calling it) for 3 days of drinking and snowboarding. The group consisted of Myself, Gabe, Jason, Gabe's brothers Greg and Nathan, and a friend of theirs that we affectionately dubbed Gomez (why exactly, I have no idea). Even though Blackcomb and the lower half of Whistler were closed, what was open was still phenomenal. The best part of all this was that it was all insanely cheap due to the late season (wielding the almighty US dollar didn't hurt either).

As you can see, the weather was spectacular (many of us acquired spectacular sunburns from this beautiful weather). The pictures give you a pretty good idea of what spring on the mountain is like. Compare these shots to the last trip. Some of them are a bit blurry because I took them from a moving snowboard. The route down to the middle gondola station (the lowest point on the mountain you could get to) was quite spotty, with large patches that were conspicuously missing the necessary snow to navigate.

Saturday was a lovely evening filled with more alcohol than humans are really supposed to consume. The highlight of the night was the last thing I expected to find in a bar in Whistler, The Jim Rose Circus. I never got to see the show when it first got popular years ago with Lollapalooza, so this was really cool. Jim Rose is funny as hell, and the show was great, especially in such a close up setting. Jason of course managed to get called up on stage for some audience participation. After the show they just hung out in the bar, signing t-shirts and drinking.