Hopefully this blog post will fill people in about some of the mistakes I made, as well as things I learnt along the way and also providing a general review of Whistler! I don't want to come across as knowing everything or getting people to suck lemons, its just how it happened and what went down!
To make the journey safely with my bike I decided to hire an EVOC bike from a local leisure lakes bike shop, pretty reasonable at £50 for the entire time. Other shops even more locally to me did other bags and would of price matched but I've heard such fantastic things about the EVOC bags that I went that bit further just to get one and I can safely say Im glad I did. It has pockets for everything and support where needed and it was easy to move around in the airport, a little heavy at around 30kgs but its a necessary weight! We weren't asked about air in our tyres or air pressure anywhere else and we also weren't quizzed about whether we'd put other stuff in our bags. My bag had not only my bike in but riding shoes and two helmets, protective gear etc. For me it was a two person lift to get it into shuttle vehicles and into the car due to the weight but as I was travelling with Buly this wasn't a big deal. Both bikes arrived safely and with no damage, well I tell a lie I'd put my empty bladder in with the plastic wedge in it to keep it aired and it must of got pressed in transit as had a deep puncture line in once we arrived so for the first days I had no water, only what I could drink from Buly's. There are plenty of bike shops in Whistler but with trends varying none of those shops sold Osprey and I had to track down a walking shop after a few days in order to pick up a spare. Lesson number 1 learnt, put empty bladders into packs to protect their casing. I removed my rear mech hanger as well as disc rotors, I also removed the stem with the handle bars so I didnt waste time getting angles right when reassembling. On the return journey the airport were more choosy and we were asked to open one of the two bike bags to adjust the tyre pressures slightly, we only had to knock a little out and not let them totally down, didn't seem worth it to us but hey ho!
Whistler is very much like Peebles in Scotland, everybody has a bike and rides that bike. Practically every car has a bike rack on the back so most people dress with this in mind. If you're into bikes and bikes are your passion, you'll fit in perfectly! If you're a female rider like me and find it nice when you see women riding bikes and often feel outbalanced on the trails then you'll be happy to know that this is evened out more, sure they still have the numbers but you wont be alone and most of them know what they're doing. You'll no longer be a unicorn, more like a black sheep! If you go in the full swing of the season they also have evenings when women meet in the bike park to ride together so that's pretty cool. Unfortunately when we went the bike park shut at 5pm so this had ceased.
Okay for those uninitiated, Whistler has a bike park at its centre. It involves using ski lifts to swing you to the top and then you ride down, then you repeat. It's pretty awesome I'll admit and you can be super lazy and not really pedal at all. If you're foolish like the 6 young guys who shared our cabin with us, your intention when coming to Whistler is to ride park every day...... all day. I've got a top tip for you the bike park is awesome but the trails are better. Yeah sure you can ride the gondola to the top and ride down again and again and again but in my opinion it wont make you a better rider. The key to talent, in a lot of disciplines, is riding different terrain and different tracks on a regular basis. We've all fallen into the trap of riding our local haunt and thinking we're goddesses and then we go somewhere else and crawl along. You need to have your head up and looking at whats coming and be able to handle whats coming confidently. It'll make you a better rider! That's better, not faster not smoother, just better in every way!
As I mentioned earlier on, trends in Whistler were different to at home, we reckoned Santa Cruz stuff would be easy to get a hold of so I didnt bother bringing a spare mech hanger, I'd just have one sent over form the States or go to a shop and be able to order one. Buly rides a British made Whyte so he brought a spare just in case. On day three I chose the wrong line and didn't pull off the moves to clear the nose from its dive and did an impression of super woman. In the process my back brake took a knock to the brake cylinder which in turn loosened off the hose and meant within a matter of half an hour I was dribbling brake fluid and had zero back brake. I didnt go to the extent of bringing brake fluid so no choice but to take the bike to one of the local shops. In fact scrap that I ended up taking it to two shops and guess what.... it's still wasn't sorted 100% until I got back because I have hope brakes, British made, fantastic service, hope brakes. The first shop bled the brake without touching the bite and reach adjustment so when i got the bike back there was no adjustment left and the bite was practically to the bars. I took it to a different shop in the hope they had more knowledge with hope brakes, they knocked a torx into what should of been an allen, it now accepts both but neither very well (not unlike our ability to multi-task, it often means we can do two things but neither exceptionally well). Clothing wise you wont see the likes of Altura and Enduro or even very much fox, everywhere is plastered in both Troy Lee Designs and Dakine. There's also tonnes of MTB shops to mooch around so take plenty of spending money and if you're short of some gear when you leave home, dont stress to much just buy when you get there.
We went with a company called BearBack biking who sorted everything out for us minus the flights, so a shuttle service was there to pick us up and drop us off at the airport and we had food 5 nights of the week and every breakfast, we just needed to sort our own lunches. The food from Bearback was phenomenal and was fully tailored to the person so if you didnt like what they were cooking for the evening meal you could ask for alternative, so the night of week that curry was served, I opted for an alternative. The bedrooms were plenty big enough and the bike tools and chalet were spot on. If i had to criticise I'd say a place to store the bike bags other than our rooms would of been good and in my opinion the TV should of been left connected rather than disconnected to encourage conversation. The two guides were great young guys, very helpful and knowledgeable on the trails and we were lucky in that a lot of the days we ended up in a group of our because of the bike park guests. Again if I had to criticise one day of the week we had two other guys with us who were whippets on the climbs, the guide rode to their speed and not a middle ground so as soon as we set off uphill they'd all vanish and we'd just end up riding alone. I personally think for the first year anybody goes they should go with a guiding/package service to get to know the trails and the area and what it can offer just to get the full experience. When I go back in three years time I'll be doing it differently, I'll hire a car for the entire time and stay in an apartment where I can buy food from a supermarket including lunches and just cook as I go by and us the amazing TrailForks app to know any new trails!
Enough of the background/unimportant elements, lets get on to the riding! It's not often I get pushed to my limits or riding, in fact I can only remember once in probably about the last three years where I've questioned my skills and ability to ride something. Yet almost everyday we stood at the top of a feature we were scoping out and I thought 'I'm not sure if I can get down this', thankfully I can say everything we were shown and everything we scoped out I rode and I didnt get to the bottom of anything and think 'I nearly died'. The riding there pushed my skills and abilities so much but made my tolerance level much higher. Even the blue trails, which are the same as a difficult red, had me fully alert and paying attention to everything I was doing because you had to! You have to be fit to ride in whistler as nothing is truly down no matter what the guides say, even though they say its downhill, its not! There WILL be a sharp uphill covered in obstacles, the climbing in whistler is just as technically challenging as the descending which when compared to the likes of the Alps is a completely different ballgame. We lost count of the amount of dabs required to get up a lot of the trails in Whistler, in fact it became a game of bingo as to who could touch the ground the most! One of us would lead the way only to dab, the other would clear it and overtake and then get stopped themselves and be overtaken again! The riding there will challenge even some of the best riders but if you're a confident, fit rider who wants to push their limits I can't recommend Whistler enough, there's not many places I'd return to having been once and Whistler is on the list for three years time from now. It's reignited a passion in me that never left but it has left me hungry for more, more trips, more riding, more experiences. I'm now planning some Italy riding next year and will be making riding trips a once a year basis!
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