Monday August 24, 2015
After breakfast in our hotel room today, we set out to do some alpine hiking. We started the day off by jumping on the Whistler Village Gondola and riding it up to the Roundhouse Lodge.
There are a number of exhibits in and around the lodge from when Whistler hosted the winter Olympic events back in 2010. We had some fun checking those out before we really got into the hiking.
Eventually we hiked over to another lift, the Peak Express, which took us all the way up to the Top of the World summit on Whistler Mountain. We spent some time exploring up here. You could see for miles in every direction and it was pretty spectacular.
We rode the Peak Express back down and hiked back over to the lift hub. From there we got on the Peak 2 Peak Gondola, which took us over to Blackcomb Mountain. This is a pretty impressive gondola to ride. At the time, it held the world record for the longest free span between towers, and it still holds the record for the highest point above the ground. Definitely not for the faint of heart!
We did not have any spectacular wildlife sightings during our hikes, though we saw more marmots than I would ever have thought possible!
Eventually we had had enough, and we rode the Blackcomb Gondola down to the base of the mountain and returned to Whistler Village on foot. It was time for lunch, and we treated ourselves to some fantastic tacos at La Cantina.
We made a quick stop back at the hotel to pick up our swimsuits.
Then we drove over to Alta Lake. It’s a beautiful little spot, and the water was warm enough for swimming. We rented a stand up paddleboard too, and Liam took control of that, criss-crossing the lake on his own and even offering Mallory a ride closer to shore.
It was a wonderful day spent in the great outdoors. Eventually we returned to the hotel to clean up for dinner, and headed to El Furniture in the village to eat. We explored the village for a while, and hung out at the playground for a bit. Before heading back to our hotel for the night, we stopped off at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler to pick up some of their famous Maple Bacon Cream doughnuts. These did not disappoint! They were delicious. We capped off the day with a hot tub before bed.
Cook Family Travels 