I Love Canada

Oh Canada. What can I say that hasn't been said? I love your mountains, your snow, your cities, your beer, your men, your women. Steve Nash, Montreal, Rachel McAdams, Keanu Reeves (honorary), the Canadian Hockey team, that guy who won gold in the moguls. And Whistler - you are the love within the love, the icing on the cupcake of spectacularness, the perfectly cambered fatties on an untracked powder day.

After missing a year for the Olympics I was reunited with my Whistler Fab Five for arguably the best weekend we've had in our 4+ years of skiing together. Maybe that's age talking, maybe long-term memory loss, but even without an epic day of cat-skiing and the shenanigans of my youth, the conditions, the company, the boards, the apres - combined, it was as good as it gets.

Sweeping in on the heels of a huge storm (reported in centimeters which doesn't sound like much when you start thinking in centimeters but it was epic centimeters!), we ran laps off Glacier, 7th Heaven and Peak chairs, six hard-charging, middle-aged yahoos high on cortizone, fat boards and snow as far as we could see. Cush moguls, champagne-snow steeps, trees with rockstar spacing making us feel hard-wired and indomitable.

Two of our days were crystal clear - cold, a little windy, but vast; more than we could ever hope to fully explore. We shredded top to bottom of the mountain finding stashes of powder in the most unexpected places. We skied until they closed the lifts then rallied with the rest of our clan for Whistler apres over pitchers of beer and nachos, a night with the Hairfarmers at Merlin's, Irish music at Dublin's Gate, a few sweaty, hard-fought, amusing hours dancing around at Buffalo Bills. Then we crashed en masse back at the condo each night, on couches and floors, in beds and in closets. You're never too old to get psyched about "free place to stay."

It was exhilarating, it was exhausting. As always, I was in awe of the vastness of the mountain range, snapping the same pictures as years past, knowing that none of them would capture how big and bold it stretches. And too, the tremendous collective energy and fun of the extended Whistler clan - my ski posse; David who organizes everything; Erin, who tolerates us all and rallies hard when the rest of us are flagging; Trish and Joe; the girls of Trish's "Girl's Weekend". In Whistler, each day is ski-phoria, each night, a long happy hour with friends.

Next year we hike the big peaks, boys!