Canada 2018 - Day 6 - Whistler

Thursday

Whistler is primarily a ski resort and was the venue for the 2010 winter Olympics particularly the sliding centre and alpine skiing, however in the summer months it turns itself into  a hiking and mountain biking resort.


Our hotel is central in the village with easy access to a host of shops and bars, handy for picking up a picnic. The weather forecast today was for showers in the afternoon so we opted for a walk along the Cheasamous river and lake which was reached via a 7 km loggers road, ie a gravel track that was a 30 minute white knuckle ride trying to avoid the potholes in our hire car!




The walk was along a well made path but there were signs which said we were in black bear country.

We had many such warnings last year in California so took these as totally precautionary however half way along our walk a young girl came running towards us clearly terrified. She reported just coming face to face with a big black bear right on the trail path. Another family group caught up with us and they were obviously more experienced with bear etiquette! So we all ended up singing a song which we all knew - "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands" which was to tell the bear there was a lot of us without scaring it which might make it attack! Colin initially heard twigs snapping in front of us and then off above us. I would love to see a bear but this was actually a bit scary!

After a brief interlude we decided the coast was clear and carried on to the end of the trail but we decided to keep our lunch in the rucksack until we could sit in the open on the beach. From this vantage point we could see the rain moving towards us, we were very fortunate the forest canopy kept the worst of the rain off for the return journey.


We walked a 20 km round trip so when we returned to the village we headed straight to The Brewhouse for a couple of IPA's and a pizza.



We returned to our hotel intending to have a coffee by the fire in the lobby but it happened to be happy hour serving apple cider with spiced rum which would have been rude to refuse. Poor Colin cannot keep awake, asleep at 8.00 pm- blame the mountain air!

Comments

  1. Unknown20 September 2018 at 23:19

    The bear encounter sounds a bit unnerving, they can run twice as fast as a man uphill or down, maybe climb a tree.lol
    Must be interesting to see a ski resort off season.

    ReplyDelete

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