I didn't write much about Whistler. I must have been in one of those phases. Of course, I have the pics from the trip up on Flickr. Here's how it went down. I flew up from SF. My buddy Russell (hey, Russell, you made the blog again!) drove up from Seattle and grabbed me at the airport. Brian flew in from DC and his friend Cara, a crazy Canuck, come in from "Winterpeg" or "Manisnowba" or some equallyh inhospitable place. Amazingly it all worked out since the four of were each coming from a different place.

Brian had a great condo on the Blackcomb side, the Glacier Lodge and from that staging ground, we had a four glorious days of skiing. The mountain was relatively empty depite the Telus Ski festival that was going on. It wasn't too cold, which is always something that has kept me from Whistler. It was around 30 the whole time. It snowed just enough every night to leave a blanket of fresh stuff on mountain(s) every morning. It couldn't have been better, except for a few minor snafus. The first was when the electricity went on Whistler, effectively shutting the mountain down. We traversed over to Blackcomb, but almost everyone else had the same idea. By the time we made it over there and skied a few runs, the electricity was back.

Then there was Brian. I like to tease Bri because growing up he was the kick ass skier and I was always trailing behind him. We both started on plastic skis when we were 3, but he graduated to the real deal long before me and I have been behind ever since. Then there was Vail. I was in shape. I was acclimatized. My skiing was vastly impraved and Brian couldn't keep up. He did a little better in Heavenly, but he had some equipiment problems that slowed him down. All that was sorted out by the time we got to Whistler. He still can't keep up with me, but he's getting better. He spent a good chunk of time with Cara who doesn't ski all the much, while Russell, who grew up skiing New England dragged my sorry ass around Whistler's toughest terrain. When we did ski together, Brian was doing great, that is, until the last run of the last day.

The day was a cold one. The skies were gray, the winds were howling, and there were few people on the mountain. We decided to take it easy. Cara had left the day before so it was just the boys. We would ski a few runs, then hit the mid-mountain lodge for a hot drink, just pacing ourselves, not in any rush to get anywhere or get off the mountain. We did have to get going around mid-day so that we could have a leisurely lunch in the village and hit the road back to Vancouver.

Skiing down from anywhere above the mid-mountain lodge at Whistler is an amazing thing. The run just seems to go forever. The change in elevation is dramatic to say the least. The summit is not all that high, only 7160 feet. But the base is way down at 2140 feet, leaving a vertical drop of almost mile and far more distance on the trails. One of the ramifications of this is that it might be freezing and snowy at the top while it's perfectly sunny and the snow is melting underfoot at the base.

This would lead to some tricky skiing at the end of the day where you had to travrse some serious slush as your neared the bottom. For me this is no problem as I love the soft stuff, but for many people not used to it, it can be downright disasterous.

So when we were sitting in the lodge at mid-mountain, debating how to get down we thought ot taking th gondola. It would have been the safe play. We had 4 great days. We were ready to go home. Thinking back we probably should have taken the gondola. But it was a cold day and it was midday and when we talked about it, we decided that the slopes were probably in pretty decent condition. They would have been groomed and would probably have held up nicely to this point. Fuck it, we're going to take one last run down and soak up as much of Whistler as we can.

We didn't take any particularly hard route down to the bottom, just picked our way delibrately down to the base, stopping a dozen times along the way. Russell would get down first. I would follow. And Brian would pick up the rear. At the top of the Fitzsimmons Express, I met up Rusell and we waited and waited for Brian, but he wasn't showing up. I had this feeling, maybe one of the those twin feelings, that something horrible had happened to him, but right as I was having that thought, here he comes down the trail. He said he caught an edge on the cat track and just went down. No big deal. I guess I was wrong. He took a while to get his skis back on, but he was ok. We continued on.

Right after Fitzsimmons, the trail gets very steep. There are no moguls or anything and compared to the top, it's nothing but compared to where we just came from, a long traverse from mid-mountain, it was a severe change. Again, Russell skied down and stopped. I followed. And then, no Brian. This time I was really worried. I ditched my skis aid ran up the mountain. I found Brian basically stuck on the top of one of the steeper parts. He couldn't turn left. His knee just wouldn't do it. This was bad. I talked him down and we made it to where Russell had stopped, thankfully.

We tried to figure out what to do. We were in spitting distance of the bottom. We could the village just beneath us. Brian might have been able to pick his way down, but we really didn't know the extent of his injury or anything about it really. He wasn't in any pain. He was just standing there. He just couldn't turn left. We made the smart play and called the Ski Patrol.

Within about 10 minutes and old patrollie came down the mountain to meet us. Ian asked Bri a few questions to determine what happened. Using keen discretion honed over a dozens of years on the mountain, Ian got Brian strapped in the sled and ferried him down the last 500 yards or so to the village where we took a taxi to the medical center.

A few hours and several x-rays later, Brian had a soft splint around a knee needing surgery for a torn ACL.The ski season was done.

Brian's a tough guy. I'm sure he was in lots of pain as we headed down from the mountains to the airport in Vancouver. We had scheduled so that our flights were close together and my flight was last so I was able to help him get sorted out at the airport. He even got bumped up to first class for the trip back to DC so it wasn't all that bad. But he faced a long road of surgery followed by rehab. He kept a stiff upper lip. I dind't envy him. I cursed our decision to ski down instead of downloading, but that's hindsight. Nothing you can do about it now. We parted ways with Brian promissing to keep me up to date.

Brain hopefully will add more to this in the comments, but I'll try to give the gist of what followed. He found one of the leading specialists at Georgetown medical who shepperded Brian through the process. He had surgery about a month following the accident and then embarked on a course of rehabilitation. He made great strides and his healing has been ahead of schedule from the beginning. Things are going so well that we have another trip to Whistler planned for the second week on February. I fully expect that Brian will be in better shape and a stronger skier because of this experience.