New Year's Eve up at Whistler and Pemberton!

So as a last minute decision, we planned to spend New Year's Eve up at Whistler as we managed to get some accomodation at the Pemberton Valley Lodge (About 32km's away from Whistler Village) and not to mention at a very reasonable rate.

A little bit about Pemberton, its a very small town with a population of 3000 people. They only have one traffic light in the whole town, two petrol stations and one general store. However they do have a McDonald's!!..

Here's that one an only traffic light in Pemberton!

We spent the first day snowboarding up on Whistler Mountain and then the second day up at Blackcomb. Conditions were close to PERFECT on the first day. No rain, No snow, nothing but fine visibility!... can't say too much about the second day as it started to snow, and to top it off there was some crazy fog half way down the mountain!. So bad that you couldn't see your hand when you stuck it out in front of you.. not good when your hammering down the slope and not knowing whether you're gonna end up in a tree!...

Being the extreme superman that I am, I was a bit ambitious on the first day, and went down a blue run a bit too fast :( (The way they grade difficulties up on the mountains is Green (Beginner), Blue (Intermediate), Black Diamond (Advanced), Double Black Diamond (Evil Kneival style!)).. So anyways I ended up doing a big stack on my stomach and slid down superman style for a little bit. Knocked the wind out of my and I think I seriously cracked a rib :( up until today its still a bit sore :(..

Here's a night shot I took in the Whistler Village. We thought we'd go down there and watch the UFC 66 fight between Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell, but I guess so did everyone else in the whole village, and it turned out every bar had a huge lineup!.. Not to mention we had to wait 1 and a half hours for each restaurant.. so ended up walking around to kill time and then ended up at the Keg steakhouse to make use of my nice $75 voucher I got as a Christmas present from my boss :D..

The traffic was CRAZY driving back from Whistler on New Year's day. It took seriously 1 1/2 hrs to move 10 km's out of the main Whistler village entrance! :(.. overall over 4 1/2 hrs to get back to Vancouver when on a "normal" day it would take less than 2 hrs!.

Here's a shot of a snow plough! It's kinda a small one though as the "proper" ones are HUGE!