KEY POINTS:
After a few days enjoying the sights and sounds of Vancouver it was time to head for the hills - more specifically, North America's largest ski area, Whistler, in the Fitzsimmons Range.
The drive from the city takes a couple of hours and passes by the shores of the Strait of Georgia, beautiful and bleak, like Scotland's lochs.
The highway is being upgraded and widened for the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, so the way can be slow-moving if there's heavy traffic or bad weather, but the trip is definitely worth it.
If there's something oddly familiar about British Columbia's scenery, that's because it is often used in films and television series. We drove past a large, abandoned warehouse in which X Files' agent Fox Mulder spent some time investigating aliens. Maybe they were here to ski?
Whistler mountain takes its name not from the sound of the wind whistling through the craggy mountains, but rather from the warning-call of the hoary marmot, a mammal indigenous to northwest North America. (British surveyors from the Royal Navy wanted to call it London Mountain, but the marmots won out in the end.)
Whistler is the host mountain resort of the Olympics and Paralympics, something everyone in BC is proud of, and rightly so.
But first and foremost Whistler Village is a resort; people are there to ski, snowboard, mountainbike, climb. You name it, you can probably do it at Whistler at some point in the year.
Whistler means fun. There are bars and restaurants, hotels and ski-shops. More than one million people travel there each year, and with the Olympics approaching, that number will skyrocket. But what can you do in Whistler if, like me, skiing comes as naturally as flying?
My answer was to learn to fly - well, sort of. Canadians are into conservation, so when two innovative friends with a love of the outdoors and a passion for the environment decided to create an experience which combined the two, Ziptrek Ecotours was born.
Covering more than 14ha, observation platforms and suspension bridges lead you through the treetops, down between the two mountains with Fitzsimmons Creek rushing between them.
I turned up with little or no idea of what ziptreking was. My research consisted of peering at the itinerary in the bar the night before then hurriedly, nervously blocking it from my mind. Flying through the trees? Me? What? No! Flying? Me? No!
Imagine a steel cable, safely anchored between two treetops, to which a person, outfitted in a climbing harness and a pulley, attaches themselves to.
And then lets go.
Gravity whips you through the treetops at speeds up to 100km/h. Screaming.
That's ziptreking. Or madness. And yet here I was, clambering crablike into a climbing harness, eyes rolling like a maddened beast, while making extra sure the straps were as tight as they could be without scything me in two.
Thankfully, we had a short training session, letting us experiencethe feel of the zipwire at the relative safety of just one metre above ground. It was quite fun, actually.
We set off in the complimentary bus as our guide explained the history of the area and what we could expect during our "adventure", and what we, if we were extremely lucky, might see: marmots, deer, eagles, bears, cougars. Bears and cougars? As one, the groups' eyes darted nervously from side-to-side and we mentally worked out who was the slowest runner. (Me, as it happens).
All too soon we were climbing the steps up a tree and on to a platform. The guide was talking but his words were just background noise as my eyes wandered towards the first of many platforms between the trees.
What on Earth was I doing? Compared with plummeting to my death, would being eaten by a cougar really be that bad?
"Don't leap off the launch platform," our guides explained; "Just sit back in the harness and, when you are comfortable, make your way down the short flight of wooden steps (that, I might add, end in a sheer drop into the forest below) then step off. So, who wants to go first?"
I looked around to find, to my horror, my party had, as one, stepped back and left me in front.
But when it came down to it, stepping off that last step was an amazing moment. There's a bounce as the cable takes your weight then a sudden acceleration as you fly out through the trees. The momentum made me spin, and I am assured no one heard my shriek (of delight, honestly) above the scream of the pulley over the cable.
It was over far too soon and a grin was frozen to my face as I went back for more. Eventually, you pluck up the courage to let go of the harness rope and then you really feel like you're flying.
There are two zip runs through the forest and I jumped at the opportunity of doing the second one the following day. If you find yourself in Whistler I'd definitely recommend the ziptrek. Actually, I'd say it's compulsory.
*Phil Welch visited British Columbia courtesy of Air New Zealand.
- Detours, HoS
