It’s the start of a new week and so everyone was up early ready for the first day of a new weeks skiing!
We managed to get the first chairlift up and so had time for a quick ski run before we arrived at the meeting point to find out who our new instructor for the week was.
Meet Ken: a World Cup downhill mogul skiier turned trainer for the Canadian World Cup team, turned head coach of the Korean Olympic freestyle team for this years Winter Olympics.
He’s in Whistler for a month before heading off to Russia in order to see his team through the Olympics!
Safe to say everyone else on alltracks has INSTRUCTOR ENVY and we had a fab day skiing. This included a hike up to Spanky’s Ladder, knee high deep powder skiing, gladed tree runs, off piste madness and ofcourse LOTS of moguls. However these were made easier by his amazing mogul technique and teaching skills – still after all this none of us could keep up with him, even when he said he was going to ski at 30% speed down the moguls and had disappeared before we’d even got over our first bump!
Relaxing evening tonight ready for a hard days skiing tomorrow.
(So excited as the forecast is… SUN!)

After an overnight snowfall of 49cm and high wind speeds of up to 180kmph, once we arrived at the lifts we realised that half of the mountain was closed. After waiting for an hour in the LONGEST lift queue I have ever been in, and then another hour for the next lift we finally made it up the mountain.
Once reaching the top we were attacked by the snow blizzard and so immediately went in for a mountain breakfast of buttermilk pancakes.. Yum.
Finally we were ready to ski and to try the powder. The snow was so good, knee deep and sometimes deeper and so much fun to ski in. Our instructors catch phrase for this day was “turning is fear” and so we just skiied straight down the snowed filled slopes and valleys and floated over whatever came our way.
Moving onto more technical skiing, once we felt like we’d tackled the powder to our hearts intent, we stopped on an intermediate slope to film our skiing. Video analysis allowed us to see that although we felt like we were so low, actually we weren’t really bent that much! We also could see our form and how to improve it – so helpful!!
Last night was our first night out, a great end to our first few days training!! We ended up in Tommy Africa’s, a crazy whistler club and then spent the whole day today relaxing and revitalising for our next week of training!
A great start to my AllTracks season.

There has been 49cm of snow over night… It’s going to be a big powder day today!!

So our room is on the bottom floor and as us three blondies are tucked up in bed we here a funny noise from outside – a noise which sounds like movement or someone walking. None of us were asleep and all of us heard the noise. Jumping to the conclusion that it was someone trying to break in we turned on the light and all screamed and freaked out as we slowly walked to the big window and pulled back the curtain to catch our invaders red handed… RACCOONS!
Two raccoons had invaded our rubbish bags outside the house and were scuffling around and stealing left overs!
P.s sorry the photos aren’t that good I was very excited / scared

Day 2 of our training began with off piste powder and back country tree runs. We skiied through the racing bike and bob sleigh tracks and fought our way over rocks in order to get to the deepest snow.
After lunch everything became more technical as the instructor stripped our skiing down to basic, making us do wide turns across the slopes while jumping in between each one. While we laughed at how stupid we looked traversing along the slopes, we were actually working on our stance and balance and this was then put into practise as we moved to a mogul slope and skied across in a similar way to our jumping.
Then we all watched as a beginner slowing ploughed past us, skiing across the mountain without moving her body at all. We imitated her for a while, which was funny as people genuinely thought we were beginners, and then we did the same but this time letting our legs lead and our feet face the direction we wanted to ski. Here we were practising pivoting. Then we got lower to the ground keeping our upper body facing down the slope and put our pivoting into practise when carving!
Was bizarre how all the beginner exercises fitted and slotted into different advanced ways of skiing!
After once again relaxing in the hottub our legs are all ready for the day ahead, it’s already snowed 20cm this evening and there’s more forecast for over night, big powder day tomorrow!

Being the only three girls in our two houses and all being blonde will obviously draw attention, the fact that we’re already called ‘the three blondes’ demonstrates this..
Unfortunately being blonde also comes with blonde moments and our tally is growing…
1. First day here we had the opportunity to ski in the afternoon if we wanted to and had all our ski equipment sorted. We sorted ours out, sent our skis in to be serviced saying we’d pick them up the next morning and then set off ski-less to ski for an hour in the afternoon…
2. First day of all tracks, have to meet at 9. 8.45 I’m on the bus on the way to the mountain – without my ski pass. Can’t get up the mountain but don’t have enough time to go back and get it…
3. With no bread and no milk for cereal we had nothing for breakfast so planned to get up at 7am to go and buy some from the supermarket. So once we’d woken up we walked down in our pajamas only to realise that the alarm had been set for 6 and none of lthe supermarkets were yet open…

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First day of skiing today as part of my ski season, full of snow and full of adventure.
After waking the whole house up, us girls ate our breakfasts while we waiting for the others to get ready for the day ahead. At first we went to blackcomb mountain and I picked up my skis after they’d been serviced over night and headed up the mountain as a house.
We skied the morning on good conditions, thick powder and and fun off piste runs however the visibility wasn’t great and half way down the mountain a big cloud had settled making it harder to see.
At lunch we met up with the house next door and skied the afternoon as a group of 11, crazy that we managed to stay together all afternoon – especially with a group filled with crazy Aussie skiers, Italian cliff jumpers, an army skier and Three blonde racers (us hehe).

After a group dinner and a chilled evening, we’re off to bed early now ready for our first day of our real, intense training tomorrow – excited or nervous I can’t decide…

Not sure what makes blondes click with blondes (they definitely have more fun) but as soon as I saw the two other girls in the airport I knew we’d be friends – meet the Valhalla crew.
Valhalla is our housing section and it’s really quaint and well designed with a log fireplace in the centre of a big lounge foe everyone to chill. Our house has 6 people, 4 girls and 2 guys, the house next door is 7 guys and the house down the road is 4 girls.
There are also two other housing sections with Alltracks skiers and snowboarders so in total there’s about 70 people.
Yesterday we had an introductory talk outlining the rules and the different components of our training and basically how they’re going to rip our skiing apart and make it perfect!
Then we had a tour of the village to find out where to meet for training and dinner and then we had the afternoon to sort out all our equipment for skiing.
So after lunch with the two other blondes, they got their ski passes while I got my skis serviced.
In the evening we had welcome drinks round a fire at the fire rock bar. A lovely start to the course, meeting people and making some new friends and now I’m looking forward to my first day up the mountain with everyone!

Final day in Vancouver.
Today after packing and checking out we planned on visiting the world famous Vancouver Museum of Anthropology, unfortunately (note to all those planning on visiting Vancouver) this museum is actually closed on Mondays during the winter.
Instead we once again hired bikes and cycled the long scenic route along the sea edge and over a huge steel bridge to a different museum – the space centre. In typical Vancouver style once we arrived in the neighbourhood where the space centre was, it was as if we were in a different city altogether. A whole different world to the scenic sea cycle path we had taken to get there.

On the way we stopped at Cardera’s – a gorgeous floating sea good restaurant situated in the harbour by Stanley Park.
The Space Centre itself was quite small and although we watched a film in the planetarium and explored the exhibition, we were done within the hour.
After travelling back across the same steel bridge and seaside cycle path we arrived back at the hotel, ready to depart for the airport.

Not sure what to think of Vancouver, everywhere we went by choice I loved – great food and great views of the mountains behind the harbour. However the bits in between, the random broken down streets and the empty blocks made the whole place seem eery and spooky. I think it would be a much nicer place to visit in Summer when the city is full of life – definitely a place I would want to experience in a different light as I haven’t made up my mind yet.

SKI SEASON BEGINS.
After an emotional goodbye in the airport I headed down to arrivals to meet Guy, an AllTracks team member by the two wooden totem poles. I had actually seen him from the balcony above and so had seen the other AllTracks skiers like me waiting to get on the bus. After meeting lots of new people, finding out who I’d be living with for the next 5 weeks and making friends we got on the bus ready to leave for Whistler.
Unfortunately the BA flight was delayed and so our 7.30 bus departure time ended up being 8.30 and now after a lot of chitchat the bus is silent, full of jetlagged, sleeping people and I am FINALLY heading back up to the mountains.