The nice thing about the Seattle Scuba course is that there is no class room time, instead you get a DVD and study on your own ahead of time. Or in our case, cram the night before the pool dive :). The pool dive was on a weeknight, from 6-11 and covered the basics of how to use the equipment and then we got in the pool.

The pool was the Safe n Sound pool in the China Harbor monstrosity. (Yeah, who knew there was a pool in that building!) In the pool you learn how to handle the equipment, clear your mask, control your buoyancy, etc.

Once we completed the pool we had a two full day session in the sound. You’d meet at the store at 9, get to the West Seattle dive site, Seacrest Cove #1 around 10.

Once there we did two dives each day, each about twenty minutes in length, with about an hour in between the two dives. Diving in the Puget Sound, in the winter, is cold. Though apparently it isn’t much warmer in the summer. For us the water temp was around 47′F. To battle the cold they decked us out in full wet suits, with hood, gloves and booties. Getting in the water is definitely chilly but you sorta get used to it. The biggest challenge is that with all the gear on it’s hard to do anything (like put your mask back on under water.)

Don’t get excited, we didn’t see much underwater. Just a few crab, some old toilets and a lot of garbage. Apparently there used to be beautiful kelp forests but the run off from West Seattle has taken it all out. Visibility was at best 12-15 feet…

The ratio of students to instructors/dive masters was 2:1 which felt like the right ratio as each day something would crop up with one or two divers and one of the instructors was able to take care of the situation (leaving the rest of us freezing on the bottom :) ). After the two dives (we reached a max depth of 50 feet on day two), you grab a late lunch to go, head back to the shop, and review some course material.

After suffering through diving in Seattle I’m looking forward to contrasting the experience in the warm waters of Puerto Escondido in Mexico next week :).

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We first heard about Silverton in Warren Miller’s film, Children of Winter, and were definitely intrigued by a ski area where long hikes were required but if you got lazy there was an A3 B-Star helicopter to help you out. I don’t know where our ski-store owning buddy JF caught wind of Silverton but this past fall he sent out an invite for a late February trip. Almost immediately a bunch of us RSVP’d. As we got closer to the date plans for some folks changed but Shawn, Ming, Dave, Andre and I were committed to giving it a go.

Granted, I was a little cautious. The adventure wouldn’t be a cheap one (you need to fly from Seattle, to Denver, to Durango and rent a 4WD SUV to get to Silverton), the weather at least in the pacific north west had been awful (really awful), there have been a few negative reviews, but most importantly, would it live up to the hype?

We pulled the trigger on the trip pretty close to our planned departure. And to some degree got lucky since the mountain was fully booked the weekend we were planning to go (they limit the number of skiers per day to 100? so you need to book in advance if you want to be sure of getting up the mountain) but a large group canceled and we got our names down on the list for Friday, Saturday and Sunday with two heli drops on Saturday to mix things up.

Turns out we made a good call going to Silverton as it got even more hype over the Olympics because last year it was home to Shawn White’s Project-X (check out that link for some great videos of the area.)

We had an early morning flight out of Seattle, met up with Dave in Denver and then got into Durango around 1 where we loaded up our Dodge Durango:

And headed to Walmart and MacDonalds. We had a blast at Walmart (thank-you deli counter lady!) and of course bought way too much food beer (we never would have thought that would have been a problem).

From Durango it was about an hour to Silverton, a small town, with no stop lights and where driving a snowmobile is a perfectly acceptable way of getting around.

Shawn booked us accommodation at the Snowed In Lodge, which while seemingly pricey, turned out not to be that much more pricy than the rustic hotels on Main Street. Seeing as I never clicked on the links sent out about accommodation I was surprised to pull up to a log cabin that sleeps 16. Our guide the next day also told us its the second nicest place in town (the year before, Shawn White stayed at the nicest place in town :) ). Outside there were 5 Saab 900 Turbos owned by a Saab mechanic (why is there die hard Saab mechanic in Silverton??)

While the Snowed In had Direct TV they didn’t have MSNBC and their Internets are slow because they don’t have fiber so we went looking for a bar showing the Women’s gold medal hockey game and ended up at Mother Plucker’s.

Silverton Day 1

Here we go!

You start the day checking in at base camp which is nothing more than a tent. There really is no running water at this “ski resort” but they do have the ability to charge your credit card :)

Then you sign your life away several times:

Next you head to the parking lot with everyone else and the guide’s form groups of 8 and trying to form “moderate” groups and “fast” groups:

Once you’re paired up, meet your guide (“Ronbo” was our guide), you get a safety briefing. All this can take some time (be patient, wear warm clothes). Then you head up the only chair lift they have which was imported from Mammoth (they paid $20k for it):

At the top you load your skis on your back (bring a good pack) while your guide checks in and gets permission for where to ski (they carefully coordinate all the runs down to maximize the farming, powder and safety):

And start hiking!

On our first run, “Sunset”, Ming tragically lost his helmet cam. He had it mounted to his board but it popped off when he tomahawked.

And even though it hadn’t snowed in a week there was still plenty of fresh tracks.

At the base of almost every run you either take an old shuttle bus:

Or school bus back to the lift:

After a twenty minute hike for the first run, we did a major hike for our second run, all the way from 12,300’ at the top of the lift to 13,487’. It took us a little over an hour…

The hike had some scary bits, and for the steepest part they had a rope to hang on to. I got “lucky” at one point when the ski loop on my Dakine pack blew. I felt it go and was able to crouch down fast enough to prevent my skis from rocketing down 4000′ feet.

At the top we had lunch:

We ended our day with a run down 100 acres. So only three runs the first day but it turned out that was plenty with the hike being the highlight.

The second highlight was drinks in the now smelly base camp tent:

In the tent we were joined by our trusty guide Ronbo who loves Lindsay Vonn and never lead us down a bad line all day:

We ended the day again at Plucker’s who normally closes at 8:30 but we convinced to stay open late for the Canada hockey game :).

Silverton Day 2

We started off with a warm up run and then headed over to the heli:

After an epic run down Grassy Shawn thought a small feature had a snow landing behind it but got drenched when it turned out to be a creek:

We suited Shawn up with our spare gear and everyone tried to clean his pants off (including Jen one of the owners of the mountain who just happened to be waiting for the heli).

Fortunately the creek we e later encountered at the end of the day they had a small “bridge”:

Our guide, Rooftop, advised us on not just where the powder was but he gave us a game plan for the night.

We started with the rum distillery Montanya (which was packed but closed at 7!) followed by dinner at Pickle followed by drinks at Pride of the West. Needless to say, Silverton does not have much of a nightlife and at every venue we saw the same people everywhere.

Silverton Day 3

We had only booked two heli runs for Saturday but when Sunday rolled around we were still on a heli high and booked three runs because when you book three or more runs you get to go to “zone 7″ which opens up a whole new set of landing zones.

After a warm up run down Delores, and a repeat of Grassy, our group plus a couple from Los Angeles met up with Aaron, the other owner of Silverton. Here he is surveying the scene:

He took our group up to the top of a couloir where we must have done okay because at the bottom Aaron pealed our group of four off (our guide, Rob, advised us that Aaron only likes to things: 1. Helicopters and 2. Powder), convinced us to do a total of four heli drops, in his understated way mentioned we were now on the “A Team” and preceded to take us to the sickest runs (tattoo, hero sandwich) I’ve ever skied.

When all was said was done Aaron tried to talk us into signing up for his Alaska RV + heli adventure in April. Tempting, but I think it’ll have to be next year.

Before leaving town we stopped to get our photo with the avalanche meter:

Thanks to Aaron and Jen for an awesome ski experience, Rob and Ron, our trusty guides, and everyone we ran into along the way (everyone in Colorado was very friendly).

Matt’s Quick Guide to Silverton

• Keep your expectations in check and get ready for them to be blown away! If you’re hoping to do 30,000 feet of vert you’ll likely be disappointed. If you’re looking for a few quality runs, you’ll have a blast.
• Hike up to Billboard at least once
• Do at least 3 heli-drops so you get access to more landing zones and avoid the 1-dropper crowds
• Ride with Aaron or Jen if you get the chance!
• Don’t skip out on beers in the tent afterwards
• The altitude will likely affect you if you’re from sea level like us
• Be nice to your guides. Ours were awesome.
• Bring lots of water, remember, there is no running water
• Skip the Diamox. I tried it but it made me nausea.
• Be prepared for sleepless nights. The altitude messed with most of our sleeping abilities.
• I think two days is the perfect number of days to hit up Silverton. One day hiking, one day heli.
• Saturday is their busy day
• Last year they sold out almost every weekend, this year has had more availability

Photos

• Mine: Traveling to Silverton
• Mine: Silverton Day 1
• Mine: Silverton Day 2
• Mine: Silverton Day 3
• Dave’s photos

After enjoying a long weekend of Olympic coverage on NBC we headed back to work last Tuesday. There we heard from Glenn about his trip to Whistler to see the luge and ski jump. We also heard from Chris, our director of finance, who drove up to Whistler for the day to see the luge. I was shocked to hear that he drove to Whistler and back in one day, shocked their was no line at the border, and shocked that you could still get tickets to events. It all sounded too good to be true. And so after hearing from another co-worker’s last minute trip to the Olympics Rob and I plotted our own last minute trip.

Alright, we didn’t plot much :).

The only planning we did ahead of time was buying this $20 parking pass that let us park for the day at Whistler but also more importantly gave us a sea to sky pass that let us drive all the way to Whistler and bypass the mandatory bus system.

Of course with a 5:20 am wake-up call the prudent thing to do the night before was to go to the Booze Olympics at John’s house:

Now we hit the road around 6, got to the border at 8-ish. At the border (truck crossing, not Peace Arch) there wasn’t a single car in front of us, something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced. We then zoomed up to Squamish and got our parking pass and were in Whistler around 10:30 (which is a pretty good drive time considering we couldn’t speed because there were so many cops).

Our first stop was the Whistler Olympic Park to see what was going on but they wouldn’t let us in, turns out you can only bus in. So we parked at our designated parking lot which was practically empty:

We then bused to Whistler village and within five minutes were offered bobsleigh tickets (cat-b) at just around list price ($50/piece). Not knowing any better we snapped up four of those for peace of mind and started to explore. The village wasn’t as busy as I would have guessed as we made our way to the box office. There we found many scalpers working their magic and so we picked up biathlon tickets (cat-a) for half of list price ($25/piece!). With the biathlon already underway we quickly caught a bus to the Whistler Olympic Park (20 minute drive way). There we discovered that once you clear security there’s a 20 minute walk to the venue. Fortunately we had Rob’s kid, Thomas, with us and we lucked into them loading us onto an accessibility bus which quickly whisked us to the venue.

There we found the men’s biathlon was over and that we missed it (as expected) so we grabbed lunch and watched the women’s 12 km biathlon from our seats in the grandstands.

Here’s the start:

After Germany won the biathlon we bussed back to Whistler and took a photo in a bobsleigh:

Then headed up the gondola to the Whistler Sliding Center. There we found our first line as everyone waited to clear security (they had metal detectors, etc):

It moved relatively quickly and we were soon watching the third and fourth runs of the two-man bobsleigh. When you first walk in you’re at the bottom of the track and things are relatively crowded and you’re far from the action:

But a short hike will take you up the track to areas where you can almost touch them as they go by at 140km/hr!

They go by so fast. Much faster than it feels watching it on TV. Of course, heading up the track means they go a little slower and makes photo taking a little easier. But if you’re not careful they’re still gone in the blink of an eye.

We snuck out of the bobsleigh a little early to avoid a long line at the gondola and hit the village for dinner. Turns out not many restaurants allow kids! Fortunately the world was busy watching the Canada-USA game and we got a table at Dubh Linn Gate and so I headed back out to watch the last five minutes of the game in the village where there was now a huge crowd. What a devastating loss! Meanwhile Chelsea was at Lululemon replacing what was stolen after her car got broken into.

After dinner we hit the road around 8 pm as the village was getting ready to party. Our drive home was pretty speedy with only one car ahead of us at the border.

All in all a long day; 5 am to 1 am. But so awesome to see two medal events and be in the thick of things up at Whistler. “Next time” we’ll do more than one day :).

So, if you’re like us and live in Seattle and have been thinking of going to the Olympics, talk to your boss or call in sick, it’s totally possible!

Here’s all our photos (first Chelsea’s, then mine).

After drying off with a few rounds at the T-Wolf bar we headed over to the tubing center to meet up with Ming, Alicia and Ben who were there for a birthday party. However, we didn’t like the idea of paying $20 to join them tubing so over it was to Rob’s cabin for dinner. With a supply of mediocre beer courtesy of beer of the month club we ended up crashing early and slept in late. (A pitch black upstairs sleeping loft made it hard to wake up.)

With more rain Sunday Andre lobbied to head back to Seattle but Rob was eager to try out his new backcountry skis so at noon we started to pack up and eventually convinced Andre to lead us up Kendall Stump.

Anticipating a slow descent we didn’t head all the way to the top and turned around at the clearing:

As predicted the conditions sucked. While we had skis on I don’t even know if I’d call it skiing! But it was nice to break-in my new boots.

More photos.

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