Whistler and the 1%

If your sample set were only the families in Whistler - the ones from around the world, speaking Swedish, Urdu, Russian, Japanese, Italian, Norwegian, Punjabi, German, Hindi, Romanian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, French, Farsi, Spanish, Czech and English (among others) - the ones with the prosperous forty-something moms and dads and two-to-three children - the ones in the restaurants and shops and, more than anything, biking and kayaking and hiking and white water rafting on and near the mountain - if these were the only people from which you were to draw your conclusions, you would say that the people on the planet have it made. 

Bruce: looking like he has it made.

Me: looking like I'm holding back a wall of snow.

Wind and sun-dimpled massive cliffs of snow. Clouds socked in the mountain top.  

The long view - most of the hiking trails on the mountain are still closed due to the record quantities of snow that fell over the winter. Crews cleared a path to the summit leaving "ice walls" to astonish hikers.

Near the Whistler summit, there stretches along the road a hundred metre inukshuk zone where travellers from everywhere build for posterity little stone monuments. There are hundreds. Some feature impressive engineering and balancing acts.

At the mountain top, I celebrate the moment: my hip and I made it all the way up. It was zero degrees celsius at the summit. Yes, I had no jacket. And yes, those are sandals on my feet. But, hiking is warm work so I stayed toasty, the fact that I don't know how to pack for British Columbia notwithstanding.

A particularly nice configuration of jackets and a smaller ice wall.

Thanks for reading!

Karen