Day 4 – Whistler

Oct 14, 2010 by Joel

Day 4 Whistler

Today was going to be a big day no doubt about it. I was booked on a full day tour to Whistler. Whistler is located about 75Miles (120km) north of Vancouver along highway 99, the Sea to Sky Highway. The drive to get to Whistler is almost as good as when you get there.

Actually in fact I think that this week, maybe the trip could have been better then Whistler itself. While today I think you could not have asked for a better day to visit Whistler, however it is also the time of year that all the lifts and gondola’s are closed for maintenance, and they are doing changes to get the site ready for the skiing season. Even though, I had a great day and have a few pictures to share as well.

The tour started out at 8am, this time of morning in Vancouver is peak hour, however really the traffic, even though we were going against it really did not seem to be that bad. Especially if you compared it to Brisbane, and I am sure many other cities around the world. However the city is also much smaller then Brisbane, and populations are distributed quite differently.

After getting out of the city, there were a lot of things to see, for the most part mountains,there are plenty around, including many which are islands which creates quite an interesting landscape, surrounding Howe Sound which actually forms a fjord.

The first stop took place at a small cove called Porteau Cove. This cove is a place set up for diving with 3 small ships scuttled here for the divers to explore, along with other man made reefs. Additionally it is also an emergency ferry terminal which can be used to dock ferries should their be a reason they cannot dock at one of the two regular docks. Although has never been used.

Visible for quite some way along the trip was a few mountains that had plenty of white along the top, well it seems this is not actually snow, but permanent Ice. There may have been a small amount of snow at a stretch but that could not be confirmed. Anyway it was something different to actually see white on top of the mountains.

It would seem that I have also learned something a little new today as well, is that Whistler is not just a ski, or winter time place to visit, there are things going on almost all of the year (yes except for when I was here). It seems during summer some of the downhill area is made use of by Mountain Bike riders, and there is a section which is purposely built up for them. As you can see from the picture below this was being dismantled by the Grader in the background.

The Whistler village itself is quite sizable, there is some 4,000 hotel rooms in the village and surrounding area, and along with this quite a wide variety of shops, restaurants and features to see in the village. Luckily at this time of year though there is an additional thing to see a much more colourful background. Summer is Green, Winter is White and Autumn is a mix of Red, Yellow, Green and some colours in between.

On the return journey to Vancouver we made a couple of stops, the first was at the 5th highest waterfall in Canada, called Shannon Falls. This are quite amazing with the water cascading down 1200 feet of rockface. The pictures really do not do the falls justice. There is still a further drop which is hidden by the trees at the bottom.

The final stop was at the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal. Just in time is see two of the ferries docking. The capacity of these ferries is quite surprising and something that is all but essential in this area.

Anyway getting back to the hotel around 6.00pm made this quite a long day, but it is something that I would not have missed, and really did enjoy getting to see a lot more of the Canadian country side.