>Whistler Day 2

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my second day in whistler, i got up super early, like 7am, because my pickup transfer to my whitewater rafting experience was scheduled for 9am, but the craptacular bus mentioned yesterday didn’t pick up from my hostel until 9:38! i still had my rented bike from the day before, so i left the hostel at 7:30 and biked into  Whistler Village. because i didn’t take the wrong turn this time and knew where i was going, i rolled into the village at 8am! i had an hour to kill, so i walked around the deserted village, under the fog of early morning rain clouds and mountain vistas

so the transport finally picked me up and we headed to the whitewater rafting HQ near Squamish, where we got suited up in wetsuits, booties, wetjackets, lifejackets, and helmets, then yellow-bused it out to the elaho rapids about an hour outside of squamish. after a lesson on what to do in case you fall in and safety security procedures (DON’T PANIC!), we boarded our rafts on the green freezing waves

there were 7 rafts in total, 8 people + 1 instructor per raft, my raft was full of 7 French 20-year-old students and me. so i got to practice my french, which was a lot of fun. while the other rafts were told to STROKE STROKE STROKE, our instructor was yelling PAR EN AVANT!! i increased my vocabulary too, “paddle” is a “pagaie.”

anyhoo, back to the important stuff. the rapids came in bursts. we’d get these turbo high waves and then moments of calm stillness.  i was in the back of the raft, so on the negative wave, i’d be launched into the air, like going down the first plummet of a roller coaster. somehow i never actually fell into the water, but i was paddling for my life! the raft directly behind us capsized within the first 5 minutes, throwing everyone into the freezing water, leaving the instructor to pull in everyone back onto the raft!

here’s some choice shots of my raft:

 i’m fourth from the left

look at me stroking!

look at me paddle!

when the waves calmed down, our instructor nick popped out some sugary snacks from his bag (oreas, jelly-worms, and lemonade) to replenish our glycogen after all the upper-body pain! then it was back to PAR EN AVANT!!!

nick also pointed out all the different mountains, valleys, forests, peaks, and lakes that surrounded us. there was one mountain that had a huge swath taken out of it when, about 3 years ago, an avalanche occurred and tore through the trees like hot knife to butter, destroying everything from the mountain peak all the way to the rapids. the trees looked like shredded cheese.

we also did some cliff jumping

so the rafting took about 2 hours and we did about 12 miles! afterwards i was soaked and completely drained, but also refreshed and exhilarated by the lush ornate scenery we were saturated in.

they then bussed us back to HQ where they fed us a delicious bbq lunch (veggie burgers, tostitos & salsa, green salad, potato salad, etc)

by the time they dropped us off back at whistler village it was 6pm! that’s a fricken full day!! picked up my rented bike that had been locked in the village square all day, cycled back to the hostel (all downhill, hooooo!), had dinner and hit the sack.

all in all, yesterday was an amazeballs day

but today, nothing compares!

and i’ll tell you about those adventures tomorrow.

stay cool