December 2023

Road Trip To Ski in Whistler, BC

Last December I was invited to join some friends of mine for a ski trip to Whistler, British Columbia. My friends, Adam and his wife Vania were going up with some of her family for her birthday, and I got invited to keep Adam company while we skied. I decided to drive and take some photos along the way especially in along the Columbia Gorge. The plan was to drive to Vancouver over the course of three days, and then pick up my friends from the airport and head to Whistler and the rented condo.

The visibility and wind was pretty bad the first two days so I figured I’d put as much road behind me as possible, and I pulled into Hood River Oregon for dinner after spending the night in Ogden, Utah the first night. The bartender at The Trillium Café, were I stopped for dinner, gave me some great advice on a camp site and a cool water fall to check out.

I woke up to a stunning view and a barge horn in the morning as I made my coffee. Then unfortunately I ended up getting lost trying to find Spirit Falls that morning. The bright side there was getting to watch all the amazing birds around the Little White Salmon River Hatchery. There was an unbelievable collection of birds around the Hatchery, Bald and Golden Eagles, as well as Great Blue Herons, Seagulls and song birds like Junkos. I also got some of my first shots of a Belted Kingfisher.

I woke up once again at the camp site recommended in Hood River early in the morning on December 16th. It was going to be a long day, as I was scheduled to pick up my friends at the Vancouver Airport around 10pm. I thought I’d be able to hang around the Columbia Gorge for most of the day light hours and still have time for the drive. So I made my way back down the Lewis and Clark Hwy to try and find Spirit Falls again.

The trailhead was unmarked and I drove past it twice, before finally parking. The trail itself wasn’t a whole lot easier to locate than finding parking. The initial ridge line was loose rocks wet from the moist air, and narrow enough to make mistakes potentially costly. At the end of the ridge the trail switched back once down a steep hill of loose soil and wet leaves. I more or less slid/fell my way into the valley, along a barely defined game trail. At the bottom was a braided path that was part trail, and part creek bed, but fortunately it wasn’t too muddy.

I finally made it to Spirit Falls, hoping it was going to be worth my time. It was incredible! The water was a gorgeous turquoise, and after spending an hour or more trying some different compositions some kayakers passed through. Which couldn’t have been more fortunate. I wanted to stay longer but I was short on time. By the time I scrambled my way back up the hill it was a bit before noon, and I still wanted to check out some of the more famous falls on the Oregon side of the Gorge.

After spending the morning at Spirit Falls in Washington, I crossed over the Bridge of Gods into Oregon and headed West along the Historic Columbia River Hwy to check out some of the more well known and accessible waterfalls along the Gorge. Unfortunately I was still in a hurry as I had to be at the Vancouver Airport by 10pm that night. I learned a lot about managing the moisture in the air shooting a big water fall like that in such a humid environment. The amount of water droplets collecting on the lens was amazing, it was a constant battle to now have spots in every image.

After picking up my friends from the airport in Vancouver we finished the drive to Whistler late that night arriving right after midnight. There were there were six of us total, my good friends Adam and his wife Vania, and some of their family. I got to tag along to keep Adam out of trouble on the mountain. The first day we were there we got all the ski gear sorted out and got ourselves oriented in the village.

The condo we rented was less than half a mile from the Whistler Village Gondola with lots of nice convenient cafes along the walk. After getting settled and getting some crepes we headed up the mountain. I had really been hoping that since we were near the coast they would have a better snow base than we had in Colorado. Unfortunately they were having a slower start to the season than we were. On the bright side though the glacial summit looked like there was quite a bit to ski.

That first day the weather was stunning and there were clouds hanging low in the valley, but I spent a decent chunk of the morning helping most our crew get a bit more oriented and comfortable on their skis. After all I have been a ski instructor for a while and I have seen so many people go on their first ski trip only to be abandoned on the bunny hill by the more experienced people the group and I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.

I skied a total of four out of the five days I was in Whistler. Most of the time it was far too cloudy to make lugging the camera around worth it. Plus it rained off and on most of the time. When we arrived the mountain reported a snow pack base of 10 inches at the base and 30 at the summit. It was dramatically different from top to bottom, with the snow kind of melting off at the mid station of the Village Gondola.

After off and on rain for most of a week though, the conditions had changed a bit. The last day I skied the summit has 3-4 inches of, kind of wet, but fresh snow. The first fresh tracks I got all season. The bottom on the other hand had deteriorated a bunch. By the second day ski patrol was telling people to download, if you wanted to risk it you could.

So I did. Turns out if you were a bit creative and jumped here and there you could connect snow patches all the way down. Until the last day, by then there was a bit of mud moat right before the base. I was still skiing though and skiing is always fun. Especially in a new place, with good friends.

We all took one day off from skiing and the rest of the crew went on a snowmobiling trip with a local guiding company. It seemed like a really well put together operation, but I didn’t hangout for long. Instead I went for a bit of an explore. I have been gradually working on a collection of photos of ski resorts. I’ve been kind of thinking of them like “trail map” photos.

Landscapes of the resort from the opposite side of the valleys. It’s proven to be a bit of a challenging project logistically since the way up is often difficult in the winters. Either way I thought it would be a great opportunity to see if I could get a shot like that of Whistler-Blackcomb. After doing my research and then going for a bit of a drive I found a couple spots that seemed like good possibilities for my photos. If only the clouds weren’t as transparent as a brick wall.

Instead I ended up going for a hike to Rainbow Falls. I tried to make it to the lake but I was running out of time and the footing got quite bad after the falls. It pretty much rained on me the whole time but it was an incredibly lush green trail. With a carpet of moss coving all but the trail itself. Like so many of the PNW falls I got to check out, it was gorgeous especially in the cold surrounded by the greenery.

I ended up having a bit more time to kill when I got back to the village so I went for a bit of an adventure around the Olympic Village with my tripod and had some fun with the Christmas lights too before I started my to drive back to Colorado that morning. A 19 hour drive I planned to do over to days, 9ish hours on the road both days. But I got a bit screwed on traffic the first day and didn’t make it out of Washington due to construction, traffic and a couple closed roads. I did ultimately make it back in time for my ski lesson, I even got 4 hours of sleep.

After spending most of the morning at the Little White Salmon River National Fish Hatchery, I headed West down the Lewis and Clark Hwy. The bartender from The Trillium Café recommended Beacon Rock for a good hike so I decided the timing was just about perfect to make it to the top for sunset.

The timing worked out even if the hike was much different than I expected. It was a well built and maintained boardwalk that MC Escher’ed its way up a sheer cliff. Not sure what I was expecting but the view the whole way around was amazing. Beacon Rock is a 848 foot tall volcanic monolith out in the Columbia Gorge. It was one of the major indicators for the Lewis and Clark Expedition that they were near the Ocean. They gave it that name.

I decided not to hang around the top for the whole sunset, and I wasn’t familiar with the area and wanted to be back to the truck before it was actually dark. It turned out to be well worth it as the shot of the gate to the trail is one of my favorites from that day. Afterwards I went to what was hands down the worst restaurant I’ve ever been to, in my life, in Portland Oregon. Only to decide it was worth going back to Hood River for the night to try and find Spirit Falls again.

We got up early our second morning in Whistler and it was super over cast like everyday when we started out which left me in a bit of a pickle. My two favorite things in the world are skiing and photography, but I don’t always like to do them together. I find it hard to ski comfortably with all my gear and I hate to leave unprepared so I have a tendency to over weight myself. This means that I often make a choice if it’s going to be a ski day or photography day on skis. With every morning super over cast it didn’t look like I’d be able to get enough light to make the weight worth it.

But I decided I’ll bring the camera anyway, after all the first day was stunning once we got above the clouds. But the first image of cloudy tree tops and gondolas disappearing in the fog was the only shot I took that day. Even at the top of the gondola the cloud cover was super thick.

It didn’t let up much at all during the day so I ended up just skiing around the mountain with my pack on. It was great to explore more of the upper mountain the day before and come up with a bit of a better plan of photos I wanted to get if we did get a day with good weather. Which we did the following day, where I took most of the rest of these shots