Saturday, June 13

You might assume this is Vancouver, B.C., and you'd only be sort of right. This is one of three different neighborhoods in a Vancouver suburb called Burnaby, with their own clusters of skyscrapers, most of them residential towers. With an estimated population of 298,978, Burnaby is actually the third-largest city in British Columbia. (The second-largest, also part of Metro Vancouver, is Surrey, which is the city you technically drive into as soon as you cross the border driving north from Bellingham or Seattle; that one has an impressive population of 700,459, which is about 93% of Vancouver's estimated 756,010. Surrey is actually on track to become B.C.'s most populous municipality by 2027. Surrey also has its own skyline of mostly residential high-rises.)

The thing that amazes me about Burnaby is that its tallest building is 708 ft tall, actually taller than any in Vancouver itself, and indeed is the tallest building in British Columbia. This is largely a product of Vancouver's insanely dense downtown long since having filled up with towers subject to height restrictions that don't exist in the suburbs (these having the understandable aim of preserving Vancouver's stunning views). Still, this aspect of Burnaby's skyline seems very weird to me, as it would be like Bellevue, rather than Seattle, having the tallest building in Washington.

For the record, Vancouver, B.C. is my second-favorite city in the world. If Seattle were not an option, I would live in Vancouver; I have visited there twelve times (though I haven't been since 2022, it's about time to go back!). This being a trip to Whistler, though, this was the first time I traveled further north than metro Vancouver—it was Shobhit's third; he went on two different work trips there a couple of decades ago, when he worked for Microsoft. Very technically, we never did go through Vancouver proper on the way up, although we did drive up a road that serves as the city limit line between Vancouver on the left and Burnaby on the right.

Once past North Vancouver, though, we then drove further up British Columbia's Highway 99, first alongside Howe Sound and then up into the mountains, otherwise known as the "Sea to Sky Highway." I had never been along this highway before and it's really beautiful.

This is called Train Wreck Bridge. I'll tell you why under the next photo! This bridge, though, was built in 2016 to provide legal and safe access to a train wreck in the woods that has been there since 1956. The site is only about 5 miles outside of Whistler Village, and on the way there from Vancouver.

There are five different train cars at this site, from a train wreck in 1956 in which a train derailed due to going twice the speed limit. Further details can be found here or here, and the most fascinating detail to me now is that the cars did not all land in their current positions as a result of the crash. What actually happened was they were moved there after a clean-up operation. Apparently it was easier just to move them out of the way in the forest than to ship them away, as then they could quickly restore rail service.

This site is very cool, although I'd still like it better if these 70-year-old train cars were not every inch of them covered in graffiti, but whatever. It's still certainly worth visiting.

Here we are at the Sundial Hotel, where Shobhit and I stayed for the two nights of our trip. If you book direct, they offer 5% less than any offer from other booking services if you find a lower price, and since we did find a lower rate at Hotels.com, they honored that deal. The hotel is 8 stories tall and our one-bedroom suite was on the 6th floor. Sundial's website features a lot of drone shots that make the area look a bit more spacious than it is; Whistler Village, where the hotel is located, is part of a pretty dense area of hotels and shops, as seen by this shot I took from one of the nearby gondolas.

I quite liked our suite, but the location left a bit to be desired: there were multiple large screens in outdoor seating areas of nearby pubs and restaurants, all of them playing sports (usually World Cup games; inexplicably, a couple of them aired the White House UFC fight on Sunday) and loud music, which was constant from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. This is clearly an issue for many guests—the hotel literally leaves ear plugs in the rooms! I actually slept fine, but found the noise a bit annoying while I was awake.

Sundial certainly had its good points, though. The young Australian man at the front desk was super cute, so that was a plus. And because I mentioned in my booking that it was our anniversary, they left us a complimentary bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.

Side note: this may be an exaggeration but not much of one, that it really felt like half the people working in Whistler were either Australian or British. This place is crawling with Aussies and Brits, and it turns out, this is indeed very much a thing.

One of the perks at the Sundial Hotel is a complimentary half-hour exclusive reservation in a rooftop hot tub. When we realized it was too late in the day to take the gondolas we took this trip for and would postpone that to Sunday, we took the provided wine, and a Mr. Freeze "freezie" that was also being handed out in the lobby, with us to the hot tub instead. (I took a similar shot before this, but Shobhit wanted me to retake it with the freezie in his hand.)

Greetings from Whistler, B.C.!

This was outside a Rocky Mountain Chocolates, which is actually a company from Colorado, but whatever. I found a Canadian friend at the one in Whistler.

Saturday, June 14

Let's call Saturday . . . "Gondola Day!" It was the whole reason I wanted to go to Whistler for our anniversary trip this year, although I did not realize how many different gondolas are technically involved, as there are two major mountains used for this town's seasonal outdoor activities: Blackcomb Mountain and Whistler Mountain. In the above shot, we are taking the Blackcomb Gondola, the first of three that we got on. (Technically we were in five separate actual gondola cars, but I'll get to that momentarily.)

In fact, due to there being so many separate gondolas, I made separate photo albums for each one, as part of my eight-album collection of albums for this merely two-night trip.

Anyway, the Blackcomb Gondola elevation gain, to Rendezvous Lodge from Whistler, is 2,771 feet (844 meters). The gondola runs on two separate rope tracks, with a middle stop usually used for beginner skiers in the winter. They had signs and staff there telling us all not to get out.

. . . And here we are, the ultimate destination for this trip: the Peak 2 Peak Gondola! This connects Blackcomb and Whistler Mountains, and until a German cable car in Bavaria beat it by 620 feet (189 meters) in 2017, this held the world record for the longest free span between ropeway towers, at 1.88 miles (3.03 kilometers). It apparently still holds the record for the highest point above the ground in a gondola: when the cable cabins fly over the valley between the two mountains, it is 1,427 feet (436 meters) above the ground.

So not only do I love an observation deck in a skyscraper or observation tower, but I love high-up views of all kinds—including gondolas and aerial tramways, in cities or in wilderness. Naturally as soon as I learned about the Peak 2 Peak Gondola in Whistler maybe a year or two ago, my immediate reaction was: I must go there! It's more impressive than any other gondola I've ever been on. As you can see, the views are truly spectacular—in the above shot, from above the valley floor, you can see Whistler in the distance.

You have to buy tickets up one or the other mountain at pretty expensive ticket prices ($110 CAD per person, which worked out to about $83/person USD), and that's what gets you up either the Blackcomb or Whistler Village Gondolas. If you've never been before, though, it's worth every penny: once up there, you can cross on the Peak 2 Peak Gondola at no extra cost, and with no limit to the number of rides back and forth. Shobhit and I actually rode it across three times: once to experience it in a regular gondola car; once to try the gondola car with a glass floor; and once to go back yet again over to Whistler Mountain where the more interesting stuff actually is. (Hearing that they have glass-floor gondolas naturally makes you assume you'll be standing on glass, like you can on the Space Needle Observation Deck; but instead, you stand at railings around a rectangle of glass in the floor,)

And then there was Cloudraker Skybridge, which is included in the ticket price, and turned out to be just as impressive an experience, if not more so, than the Peak 2 Peak Gondola. Whistler Mountain's Roundhouse Lodge, which the Peak to Peak Gondola goes to from Blackcomb's Rendezvous Lodge, is at an elevation of 6,069 ft (1,850 m); the elevation at Cloudraker Skybridge is 7,200 ft (2,183 m), so it's another 1,131 ft (333 m) higher than the lodge. In the above shot, you can see the skybridge at the top of the mountain in the distance, and I used the zoom to take this shot from near the lodge.

To get to the Skybridge, though, you take an open chairlift, which you have to walk a ways down a trail from the lodge to get to, so the elevation gain from that lift's base is actually a bit greater. This chairlift is called the Peak Express, and I thought it was super fun, though Shobhit was kind of terrified on it. I just held onto my phone for dear life, given the number of irretrievable items I saw lying in the deep snow far below (soda bottles, a walking stick, a pair of glasses, a baseball cap). It was an interesting experience to be all the way up there surrounded by snow even though it was still warm enough for me to be comfortable in my shorts and shirt.

The Cloudraker Skybridge has a span of 427 ft (130 m), and although it's entirely made of metal, it still bounces pretty noticeably as you walk on it—which had Shobhit turning back after maybe 20 feet across on his first attempt. I walked across on my own, and Shobhit made his way over via a fairly short trail you can take to the other side instead. He decided to brave it on the way back, though, and very quickly walked himself back across.

At the other end of the bridge is also a triangular platform, jutting even farther out over the mountain, called the Raven's Eye. Having walked over via the trail, Shobhit braved the Raven's Eye with me first, and then we walked together back across the bridge.

We had to take the Peak Express chairlift back down from there, which was even scarier for Shobhit since this time we were facing the depths down the mountain rather than facing the mountain itself as we did on the way up.

The Winter Olympics were hosted by both Vancouver, B.C. and Whistler in 2010, and plenty of monuments remain 16 years later, including these Olympic Rings outside Roundhouse Lodge on Whistler Mountain. As you can imagine, these attracted a steady stream of photographers. Including me!

Also on Whistler Mountain, near Roundhouse Lodge: the Whistler Mountain Inukshuk. This is one of multiple human-shaped piles of stone around the area, something traditionally made by Inuit people to be used as hunting and navigational aids, among other functions.

This guy is about 10 feet (3 meters) tall, and you can see Shobhit peeking between his (or her? their!) legs.

Final gondola! We opted to catch the Blackcomb Gondola on the way up, the base of which was 0.4 miles from our hotel; and then take the Whistler Village Gondola back down, from the Whistler Mountain side, as the base of that one was just roughly 530 feet (161 meters) from our hotel, making it much closer to return to when we got back down off the mountains.

There's not a lot about the Whistler Village Gondola that distinguishes itself, except that it largely runs parellel to—and at one point, crosses over—the Whistler Mountain Bike Park lift, mountain biking being a major attraction during the warmer months when there is no snow for skiing. People riding that lift bring up their bikes hanging on the backs of lift chairs.

Having spent about four and a half hours on the whole "Peak 2 Peak" experience—we had gotten in line for the Blackcomb Gondola at about 9:30 a.m.—we went back to the hotel to rest for a while. Later in the evening, we set out for a special place to have our anniversary dinner, celebrating 13 years legally married and 22 years together. We had walked Whistler Village, the town's version of a "downtown" that is entirely pedestrian-focused with tons of shops and restaurants, on Saturday evening looking for places, and we settled on a place called Araxi.

We opted for the vegetarian options from their three-course dinner, and it was generally delicious. And when the dessert was brought out for us, complete with a lovely Happy Anniversary written on the plate, I asked our waiter—who was, of course, from London—to take our picture.

Monday, June 15

Here we see Brandywine Falls, from a platform overlooking a cliffside in Brandywine Falls Park, the first of two similar provincial parks we stopped at along the Sea to Sky Highway on our way back home from Whistler. This waterfall is 230 feet (70 meters) tall, and is part of Brandywine Creek, which flows into the Cheakamus River and Daisy Lake, which in turn flows into the Squamish River and ultimately into Howe Sound, which reaches 26 miles inland alongside the Sea to Sky Highway.

We also stopped at Shannon Falls Park, which is about 50 miles (80 km) south of Whistler and 38 miles (61 km) north of Vancouver, also along the Sea to Sky Highway. This one is 1,099 ft (335 m) tall, although that's not in one continuous drop like Brandywine Falls. Shannon Falls was very impressive, but I found Brandywine to be much more scenic.

Anyway, these were the highlights of our journey home on Monday; I can now say I've been to Whistler, two nights was actually the perfect amount of time, it was totally worth every expense, and I can't really see going out of my way to go there again. But I'm thrilled to have checked it off my list!

[posted 7:09pm]

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