Whistler in the Summer

We got back on Sun­day from a few days at Whistler, where we spent some days of vaca­tion with my brother and his fam­ily. While we all never felt very rushed, we man­aged to get quite a few activ­i­ties in while we were there, includ­ing a gon­dola and chair­lift trip up to the top of Whistler moun­tain, a Zip­Trek tour in the for­est above and around the Fitzsim­mons river, a hike to Lost Lake, a cou­ple of movies (“Get Smart” at the local cin­ema, “Jumper” on DVD) and sev­eral lunches and din­ners out. My niece Renata also got in a cou­ple of ses­sions on the bungee tram­po­line, which helped her to bounce a cou­ple of sto­ries (at least) into the air. While I can’t doc­u­ment all of it in pic­tures and video, here are some high points (sic):

Pam wasn’t quite pre­pared for how cold it would get, but for­tu­nately, there were some blan­kets avail­able at the chair­lift, about 2/3 of the way up.):

I also thought I’d include a few Zip­Trek videos. This gave me a chance to try out Flickr’s video fea­tures. I’m not includ­ing one that I can’t seem to flip hor­i­zon­tally (my Sister-In-Law held her cam­era side­ways and no mat­ter what I do, includ­ing chang­ing the file and sav­ing it to a new movie, the uploaded file seems to revert to that orientation).

Here’s Pam slid­ing on the wire across the Fitzsim­mons River:

Now, from the point of view of a par­tic­i­pant. Need I add that this is a blast?

In addi­tion to the rides up in the trees (about 5 times over the river and back), you get a bit of an ecol­ogy lec­ture about the area and some tips on what you can do to be more ‘green’. I really like Zip­Trek, who seem to prac­tice what they preach, in terms of an ecologically-aware busi­ness. Aside from the vans that they use to trans­port peo­ple to and from their sites (and I heard that once there are elec­tric ones or per­haps hybrids that will serve in this capac­ity, they’ll switch to those), they are pretty gen­tle on the envi­ron­ment. They even have a small water-driven gen­er­a­tor via the river that pro­vides most of the elec­tri­cal power for the A-Frame where they house their offices, train employ­ees, and end some of the tours. Our tour lead­ers were col­lege stu­dents major­ing in Eco-tourism and Geol­ogy, and they made sure that none of us were ever in dan­ger or uncom­fort­able, despite what looks like an ‘extreme’ sport.

In addi­tion to some good meals together (Monks up there is very nice and beau­ti­ful to look at; Pam’s Hal­ibut dusted with porcini mush­rooms and sun-dried toma­toes was superb), Pam and I also had an excel­lent cel­e­bra­tory din­ner of our third Anniver­sary of com­ing to Canada on July 5^th at Il Caminetto , one of the restau­rants of Umberto Menghi (his Il Gia­rdino and Umberto’s are both down­town). He’s one of the three celebrity chefs in the White Spot com­mer­cials, (the other two are Rob Fee­nie and John Bishop) always talk­ing about ‘the sauce’. We ate a light din­ner; Pam chose a sub­tly flavoured Roast Cor­nish Game Hen atop chick­peas and mixed veg­eta­bles, and I had a sim­ple but per­fectly done home­made Fet­tuc­cine with cream sauce, peas and pro­sciutto along with some excel­lent wine: A good BC Pinot Gris made by the Pen­t­age Win­ery from Skaha Bench in the Okana­gan, as well as an intense Ital­ian Mus­cat for dessert . I’ve become a big fan of dessert wines, and some­times pre­fer them over a cake or tart.

So for try­ing of celebrity chef restau­rants in the area, we are now 2 out of 3. I guess a visit to a Cac­tus Club would now count for Rob Fee­nie, since he has become the ‘food con­cept archi­tect’ of that chain. That’s what the arti­cles say, at any rate.

A nice time was had by all (I think), and we feel pretty lucky to have this beau­ti­ful resort area so near to us (for those who don’t live in Van­cou­ver, depend­ing on traf­fic and con­struc­tion on the Sea-to-Sky High­way, it’s about a 2 1/2 hour drive from the city). My brother summed up Whistler by and large bet­ter than I could: “It’s a bit like Dis­ney­land for adults.”