Whistler 2012 / 2013 - The Community Blog

My Whistler Adventure So Far……

So the night before leaving I was still doing my final pack, trying to make sure I packed all the essentials. Only took one board as I am planning on getting another one here before I leave if the funds allow.
Managed to get everything packed into my snowboard bag just n the 23kgs (room wasn’t the issue, weight was), and some clothes in a small carry on wheelie bag and my camera gear in its own bag.

the traditional living room sprawl of gear pre pack

Had a pretty good flight besides a couple of delays on the Melbourne tarmac and just over an hour in Sydney. Was ok because I got to sit at the bar on Australia
Day and have a few beers and chat to a retired firefighter from San Fran. He bought me a few beers which was sick.

It was the longest flight I’ve done, but with plenty of movies to watch it went pretty quick.

Window views

I arrived in Vancouver Australia Day morning and worked my way up to Whistler to meet up with Finney and his housemates.
They all had quite an epic Aus day on the hill (which I wish I could have been there for, but getting here in the arvo was the best I could do) and they were quite pissed when I caught up with them haha
Had a chilled night but still managed to smash 24 beers down before going to bed
Finney and I realised we were Ollie Pop twins

The next day I went and picked up my seasons pass and just did 1 run just to say gday to Finney who was out working on Peak Chair. Seeing it was my first time on a snowboard since the last day of The Shred i was a little ambitious thinking I would do Peak to Creek first thing.
Whistler is HUGE!! IT is like 3-4 of our mountains back at home stacked on top of each other. After getting to the bottom of Peak to Creek I was in worlds of pain and exhaustion

proper riding started the day after….

to be continued…

Have been living with Finney and his housemates Mitch and Jess in Nordic. Its a nice spot. I like being down closer to Creekside. Its much quieter and most of the riding we do is off Whistler Mountain anyway.
Cant complain when your walks to and from home have views like this

In my first two weeks I did a shit load of riding.
We were still managing to find some fresh stashes of snow even though it hadn’t snowed for quite a while. I rode for 13 Days before I had my first day off and the only reason I did is because it was a Saturday with mental crowds. I figured even if the snow is good on a Saturday no point as I can ride any day of the week.
The terrain here is amazing and the amount of areas to explore are endless!

I have been lucky enough to be riding with a really awesome and varied crew. I have people to ride with every day of the week due to everyone being on different shifts. It is super to ride with a crew that has such good knowledge of the hidden spots to ride.
In my first 13 days riding I honestly think I only rode inbounds just for access. 90% of my riding has been out of resort bounds off to the sides and in the trees.
Its been awesome riding areas like VD and Christmas Trees, McConkeys, Kybers and Orange Trees/Cliffs and Million Dollar Ridge. Ridden plenty more tree areas but these are the main ones and the ones I can remember the names of.

Exploring has been so much fun we are still finding new areas and really starting to know our way through.
Riding with this crew has really pushed my riding too. We really charge through the trees and huck ourselves off every pillow, side hit and drop/cliff we can find. Sometimes its really pushed my comfort level compared to what I’m used to riding back home, but I feel I have improved heaps and am starting to do some good sized drops/pillows/chutes/ridges

Don’t have many photos of all he riding in these trees. Here are some other photos to break up the reading for a bit

views from Peak out to Black Tusk

Sun setting into Peak-2-Peak

More alpine views

The classic Peak-2-Peak vanishing into nothingness shot

Alpine magic in every direction

Bit of playing with my new fisheye lens

An arts photo of Black Tusk I took

Looking over to Blackcomb

Another artsy photo with the fisheye

A shot I snapped of Finney slashing our first lot of powder in VD trees

After we had our first lot of decent snowfall and powder we really charged everywhere we could on Whistler mtn, then when most the guys were back at work me and two others (Tim and Korvan) headed out to Blackcomb Glacier for a hike to find some untouched snow in the sun.

We hiked our ways up from glacier around the back into Bodybag Bowl. There was already a pretty good boot pack up there from the previous days of people hiking and skinning up.
Here is a photo from the way up.
Hiking Into The Heavens

When we got up to the saddle to drop behind the peak that contains DOA chute we had a quick rest and took some more photos
Plenty of backcountry and touring to be done out here on the glaciers

Other hikers stomping on further than us to head in the direction of Spearhead I believe?

Looking back into Blackcomb glacier to where we hiked from

Bit of a panoramic shot

We then scooted down the next face to work our way to Bodybag. Even the face leading to the entry we had awesome big open up touched turns.

Once we got to the top of Body bag I was frothing looking in. There was some tracks in there already but I was able to get untouched most the way down into Booterville. It was a wicked run down.

We then rode through Booterville hitting pre built hits that were covered in pow and launching our way down into the tree line. We were impressed with the amount of fresh untouched snow still in the lower tree line and followed it all the way round until we had to cut back into get on 7th chair.

Was a good day. Think I did one run then called it a good day.
Was good to ride Blackcomb for a bit and do some hiking.

After this we started to get some warm sunny days and no snow in the near future. So started to work our way into the parks. The parks here are so much fun and there is heaps of features from sml to XXXXLLLLLLL so always something to ride and progress on.

Had some good days in park, didn’t really learn anything new but more just getting my feet back into it.
I ended up having a slip in the Blackcomb Medium park and smashing my tail bone pretty good. Its just starting to feel better now, though it never stopped me from riding. Just hurt like shit and I rode thru it haha. It was on the big hip feature. It was a kicker to gap to a hip landing then the landing turned to a drop gap step-down. Hard to explain but I don’t have a photo.

I did a day of filming the boys in the park in the sun because I didn’t feel like pushing too hard. Hopefully we will get an edit for you by the end of the season.

Since the weather had been good and snow not the best, we decided to have a BBQ in Finlandia. It is a hidden little spot on the hill which gives good views down over the valley. We went up the day before and built 3 tiers of couches into the snow, built a beer dispenser, a BBQ platform, two kickers and a massive slide down the hill with banks and all. Was one of the funnest days of my life. So much fun drinking, partying and carrying on like idiots for a day in the trees. Don’t have many photos from it sorry :( there is footage and pics but on other peoples cameras at the moment. Here are a few
The Crew

“Coloradoing” a tree didn’t turn out to plann when it ended up being super flexible

Was a good day and I think we will be going there again for my going away drinks/party day.

Im a bit scattered and all over the place with this write up. Forgetting so many fun times to talk about but just trying to think of the main things to tell you all.

Here are a few more random pics.

As much as the hill walking up to the house can be a pain at the end of the day, its always pretty

Whent to Whistler Brewing Co in Function.

Was some awesome beers to be had there. It was funny how we ended up there. We were going to go to Bounce (trampolines everywhere with foam pit etc. like back in AUS). But when we got there there was a kids function on and we needed to try to let 2.5hrs go by. So we decided to go the brew house and have a few. After we were done there we still needed another hour to spend so we headed back to Creekside to Dustys to smash down an awesome nachos and another bevy then drive back. When we got back, there was still kids everywhere, and found out that the function had finished, but a new batch of dropins had arrived. We called it quits and went home a little drunk but no bouncing.

We managed to get back there this weekend just gone. Was good fun, but shit is it exhausting!! Ran into Kyle there briefly. He was bouncing so high off the wall tramps!
by the end of the session I was landing corked 720spins into the foam pit (off a tramp with no board). And with a tramp board was starting to get variations of inverts on the tramp.
Next day I was sore as hell haha

Here are some photos from night time wandering around (drunk and not knowing where I’m going )

Nice write up K2 (about time too!!)

I think I did that walk up the hill to Finney’s once! haha too lazy!

Im still typing haha, more to come very shortly

Sledding
I know a few of you have been keen to hear about how I ended up going sledding.
I’ve been super luck in that a mate, Korvan, also is here for the season not work, just to ride and sled. He is from BC (close to Nelson from memory) so owns his own truck. And he has just got his sled back from getting a total engine rebuild. He waited for it for ages and was keen to take it out for some test runs and wanted someone to come along and seeing I was the only one with out commitments (and we have been riding together most days) he asked me. Was pretty stoked because I have never been sledding before (other than at interschools getting taken up the run to the start gates again).

The truck and sled. Deano would love it. Dodge Ram 5.7 Hemi. Sled is a Polaris Dragon 700. Got some bloody power I’ll tell ya that!!!!

Our first day out Korvan and I went out towards Powder Mountain area in Callaghan. We decided against taking skis and boards as we just wanted to practice doubling along the sled trails and get out into some of the bowls and just explore. We went out and first bowl we went into was Chocolate bowl off Brandywine Mountain. Took us about 16kms via club trails to get there. It was dumping snow as we were heading out there. We were getting up to speeds of 80km without the two of us on it on the flat bits of trail where it wasn’t too bumpy. It was bloody hard work holding behind him at those speeds haha. Was scary at times, cos you really need to throw your weight around when going around corners with any speed.
We got to Chocolate bowl and when it finally cleared up we realise were were really in some backcounrty and the bowls were massive!! Found another cat track up a face and took it up. when we got up there the snow that had been fallin all day was so deep and extremely light!!! I was so devo that I didnt carry the board in as I could have had a pretty epic ride out. But we made the decision to just explore so I was content with that.
He cut a few laps up and down the hill in some light powder and had some fun. I wasn’t doing any driving at this stage as it was his first day back with his sled and he wanted to play. I was happy just being out there seeing it was a Saturday and Whistler was mental busy.

We jumped back onto the trails kept exploring and trying to find areas that we wanted to build jumps of find cliffs to drop on future trips. Found some awesome awesome awesome pillow fields. Its just a matter of getting to the top of them.

Next we worked our way into Brandywine Bowl. From here is where you can access some awesome backcountry Alpine areas. Out from where we were is apparently where Forum filmed on of their recent videos. Korvan cut some laps of Brandywine while I watched some awesome sledders shred up some epic steeps.
They were flying up stuff like this. Sounded like a million mosquitos where in the area haha


Brandywine Bowl

Korvan is super keen to get up into that chute on the right of the photo. He is a super good skier ( and a bit insane too haha) It is so big out there. Getting out into the backcountry really humbles you, and we weren’t even back out in there.

Pano at Brandywine Bowl (not best pano, my hands were shaking from holding on so much haha)

Did some more exploring around just following trails and did about 50kms this day. Went back to Dustys for a beer in Creekside ( I think I am there about 6 days a week hahaha)

The next day two more guys (Tim and Sam) had a day off and we decided to head back out to Chocolate bowl to test out our towing systems. We started off with having me doubling behind on the sled with Korvan, and towing Tim and Sam on the two ropes behind. We were getting up to 50km when the trails were good. But it was super hard work for them towing up hill all the time.
Played around when we got to the bowl but snow had gotten really heavy over night with a fair crust on it.
After trying to scope for build areas we just decided to call it a day and go back and work on our towing.

When we got to down hill sections we decided to just ride down. Tim and I were towing on the way back with Korvan and Sam on the sled. We had a ball. We were pretending to wakeboard and flying out off side hits and doin 180s and jumps and slashes behind the sled. We did have a camera attached to the sled looking back but the footage is pretty shaky as it was a cheep cam. Will still try to get a hold of it as there is some funny moments on it.

Towards the end we decided too tow all three of us. That was EPIC fun. The trail was really rutted out and was like going over a million speed humps. Still we were up to 40km with three of us behind pulled through now slush. We decided to try to film on our iPhones while being towed and take instagram photos so many close calls but made the day finish on such a high.

Preparing to be slednecks

Triple Towing iphone p[ic

Triple Tow inset Selfie hahaha not looking where Im going sketchy!

Bit of a GPS mapping of the first day so you can get an idea of where we went.

Sledding continued……

Sledding Rutherford/Pemberton Icecap

A week later I was taking a day off on a Saturday and Korvan called at 11am asking if I wanted to go sledding again. My body was pretty sore and I really needed the rest, but decided to go anyway.
We headed up near Pemberton to Rutherford. Followed the Rutherford Snowmobile trails out 25ish km out into what we called “the middle of bum fuck nowhere” We really felt like we were in the middle of nowhere this time. Was great. We wanted to work on our doubling technique because, though it worked last time, it wasn’t super comfortable. This time on the way out we doubled standing side-by-side both holding onto the bars. This worked heaps better. We were able to average 50kph and go about 15km before having to stop for a quick rest. We still found it hard like this for us to both transfer our weight side to side but we managed ok and it was heaps better on the legs and knees.

We went through a bunch of difference landscapes getting out there from open trails, trees, steep climbs to a valley of open creeks and bowls. When we got there there was bunch of guys already on their way back and we had a quick chat and they pointed us in the direction of the lake and glacier.
Once we got up there the snow was SOOOO deep. Like some bits chest deep. We knew we were gonna get the sled stuck lots. But that as our goal for the day anyway. To get out in deep pow, practice driving the sled in it, when we get stuck, get good at digging it out and learning how to avoid getting it swamped.

It was shit loads of fun flying a cross the lake in the middle of “bum fuck nowhere” in endless pow. I got to drive the sled around today and it was so much fun, but so much hard work. Jumping from one side to the other trying to carve it through the pow. Need so much strength, timing and throttle control to make it work good.
We played around for an hour or so seeing it was already getting late by the time we got out there and took some pics on our phones too. Here are some of the snaps.

Life in the backcountry

More pillow fields to come back and ride. Most of these were the size of cars!

We wanna try to get up into that long skinny chute in the trees

Korvan sledding a hill into the lake

Korvan bouncing through some DEEP pow

Me cutting some laps

Me

Me

Map of where we went too

On the way back out we got the sled stuck about 4 times. And it was hard hard work. I was truly rooted by the time we got home. Was such a fun experience though.

Last week we started to get some awesome snow again. Slaying our usual spots in the trees doing top to bottom runs pretty much entirely out of bounds. Had some awesome awesome days. Been so stoked on life and loving it here so much. I can see myself making a move over here for sure.

Was good to see some snow back in our street and around the house

Snowy street again

Good to finally see Creekside looking WHITE

Some other random pics
Safety Meetings in the trees

Coming up Red Chair

All in all I love it here and the people I have bee spending my time with has made it even more amazing.
I have done 28 Days of riding since getting here on Australia day and 3 days of snowmobiling and prob 4 days of rest???

Stoked and will try to do weekly updates instead of waiting so long next time
Shred on
Brad

Also, follow some of my photo additions on http://www.brad-hocking.tumblr.com/whistler if you dont have facebook or instagram to see them

Sledding looks sick! Looks like you’re having an awesome time man. Jealous as.

Great write up Brad, really enjoyed it and look forward to the next installment!

Nice stuff mate!!!!! #livinthedream

Those pillow fields look CRAZY!!!!!

You should start ya own thread/blog, so it doesn’t all get lost in here too?????

Thanks guys! Been awesome. I ll prob just keep it together in here now and at the end put it all in one thread.