Brink's Canada Trip - Dec11

[brink]

Sunshine Village- 28th Dec.
Got there early to get on Gondola so girls could get to their snowboard lesson by 9am. (both were sick of ski boots). Poor visibility and strong winds on higher chairs, but up to 30cm fresh pow everyone talks about. Finally got me some boot/knee deep freshies off the Wawa chair. Skiied on Kastle BMX 88's - beautiful for the conditions. Good initiation like K2 Richters. Son was on Dynastar Sultan 85's which he liked. Went on most chairs in the bowl area but visibility and winds got the better of us so went to mid mountain (Wolverine Chair) for plenty of fun runs in partly tracked powder. Snowed all day. I did one run on Goat's Eye before packing it in (Girls wanted to go after a big day snowboarding with a a real gun instructor) - I'll be back here one day.
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[brink]

Well - things must come to an end.....
After half day finishing off some sightseeing in Banff we drove to Calgary for a flight back to Vancouver.
Spent the last 3 days in Vancouver and now waiting for our (delayed) flight home from YVR.
Spent our time kicking around Kitsalano, a Vancouver Giants hockey game (awesome!), the Boeing Factory down in Seattle (big trip for 90min tour, including the obligatory stuff around with US Border Control, but a real eye opener) and the Bright Nights display (for the littlies really but still fun). We'll be back!
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[chunky]

Fantastic! US border control through to Seattle is painfully slow. Next time we cross the border we will go inland and cross at a smaller border crossing (which we did on the way back from Seattle and was much much quicker)

[chunky]

So what place did you like sliding the best?

[brink]

Definitely Sun Peaks from an all round perspective. Whistler Blackcomb obviously awesome but family found 'green' runs a bit more like blue but I would give it another bash for sure. I would have liked to have seen more of Sunshine Village as well.

[chunky]

So you got the bug and want to go back now ?

[brink]

Yes for sure. Canada rocks. Instantly liked it more than the US on several levels.
Park City, Japan and Verbier are all on the (distant!) list, but +1 is already talking about "living in Vancouver" - so just have to come up with a plan to pay for it all.

[brink]

Have updated a few entries so the photos show.

[Xena]

Great photos Brink!!!