Happy New Year!

*WARNING: This blog contains more detail and photos as requested!*

Happy New Year everyone!  We watched the new year roll around all around the globe before it was finally our turn.  I have to say, I’m always proud to be from Sydney because our fireworks are without a doubt, the best!  We spent NYE at a local bar, we thought it would be heaving by the time we got there at 10.30pm but we were the 23rd and 24th people to arrive. At least there was no queue for drinks and the (awesome) band were taking requests!

The new year started perfectly with a pancake brunch with Mike’s cousin and girlfriend in Whistler, before some more skiing and a Fire and Ice show. For the show, they make a big jump at the bottom of Whistler and a handful of snowboarders and skiers did some incredible jumps, through a burning ring, with fireworks on their skis! I’m not making it up… here’s a video.

We’ve had a couple of days off to refresh the legs, catch up on some admin, open a US bank account, visit a local waterfall, stroll around town, and drink some local beer. Plus we’ve been good citizens helping to rescue a South African couple whose car was stuck in four ice potholes, shovelling the driveway, and helping a lady who crashed / skied straight into a chest of drawers sized chunk of ice at about 40km/hour. Not recommended.

It’s gotten cold again here, -22’C (plus windchill) but we’re much better equipped now plus we know where to get the best hot chocolate, waffles and salted caramel cinnamon buns. The other benefit is that the cold temperatures keep people off the slopes, so it hasn’t been too busy!

*We forgot to take a photo of the first cinnamon bun, so had to get a second.

On our last day in Whistler we had the best day of our trip so far.  We got up the mountain for breakfast and in time to see the sunrise and being a blue-sky day it was absolutely beautiful.

The other awesome thing that happened was that we bumped into Abi and Andy, who we had met about 10 days prior on a lift! We decided to ski together and ended up spending the whole day together – we had a brilliant time! Here we are the gang of four…

Abi used to teach on the mountain so took us on runs that we wouldn’t have done (in return we introduced them to cinnamon buns!)…

…including this jump that went wrong, straight into powder!

Poor Abi had frostbitten toes from the really cold day in December and so we took a few stops to warm up, which gave the boys plenty of time to talk about investment strategies!

We’ve had an awesome start to the trip and done loads of skiing, we skied 73,423m vertical and took 141 lifts. I don’t know what that is in terms of distance, we highlighted all our runs here:

We have seen some beautiful sites whilst in Whistler; we saw fog flowing through the valley, took the Peak to Peak gondola and even had moments of solitude traversing through the forest.

So after three awesome weeks in Whistler we packed up and drove to Kelowna yesterday. Howe Sound was absolutely gorgeous once again…

Things got a bit boring when we got to the east side of Vancouver (very flat, no trees and motels by the side of the road). In the distance though, there was a sign of what was to come… big mountains! We climbed through snow covered pine trees, into the mountains and saw the most beautiful sunset I’ve seen in years.

We came down the mountains into the Okanagan Valley and to Kelowna (which means “grizzly bear”, so we are very much hoping it doesn’t live up to its name!) where we’ll be for a week.  I’m currently tucked into bed since coming down with something and Mike has hit the Big White slopes where there’s 5 inches of fresh powder!

Special thanks must go to Megan for her recommended “My dad wrote a porno” podcast, which made our daily drive to and from Whistler much more entertaining!