Hey Steve, I have a few hundred days of skiing (not many by you locals’ standards, but a good amount for a vacation skier) on the slopes of Colorado including a bunch at Telluride so I definitely appreciate it. This trip is more broad based than hard core skiing because of the family.
I was a little concerned about the weather in March, but it’s literally the first 6 days. And, I’ve had hit and miss conditions everywhere over the years. You just never know. All you can do is alter your odds. My hard core group always goes once or twice in January and early February, but cold is not object for us and our gear. It is infinitely more important on this trip for my family to have a good experience and skiing in single digits or below is not a recipe for that. And, the village resort feel for Whistler is a big draw. I’ve also done Lake Louise before and it’s just not ideal for this trip.
Yes, we checked on all the major spring breaks and should be ok for the first week in March.
Peter - no nordic experience, so probably won’t be doing that, but thanks. My issue isn’t what to do with her, but how to plan out the week. I kind of hate to start with the first day being the off day, then 5 straight days of skiing. I think she needs to get on the slopes ASAP and the we can gauge things with her interest, excitement, and exhaustion level. I’m leaning toward a single day lesson on the Sunday, then evaluating her as to whether to continue daily a la carte depending on how her energy allows, or committing to the 5 day ski camp. Of course, the weather could be the wild card.
BTW - snow looks awesome right now, but we’re 6 weeks out, so it’s irrelevant.
Re your daughter and ski school. I would definitely start her on the Sunday (may be even a private lesson to really get her going) and book the full camp as well. That way she’ll feel ahead of the game from the start on the Monday. If she gets at all tired you can always take her out of the camp for an afternoon one day to let her take a breather. If she’s loving it and wants to keep going then you’re covered. It’s called building in redundancy! We started my two girls at age 3 and 4 and they would easily do mornings every day then play in the afternoon in the snow, hot tub etc etc. At age 5, they were doing full ski school days for the 6 days but typically with at least one or 2 afternoons off.
Well a lil late to this thread but as I’m sure you’ve discovered, Whistler in March this year was no picnic. But I will contest that Whistler in March is always bad. The last three years have been epic. Last year in particular March 4-11th was fantastic. I believe we got about three feet of freshies during that trip.
Yep. Snow was awful, but despite that, it was an outstanding trip. Everything except for the skiing was great! We loved the food (knocked down about 4 dozen raw oysters every afternoon!) and the village. Relative to the top US resorts it was much less expensive and generally better. The biggest highlight for me was my 5 year old daughter learned to ski and loved the experience!
As to the skiing - well, no tree skiing, essentially no black slopes open. Fortunately, it turned “cold” for our week so they were able to blow snow on some slopes. But, overall anything that was open toward the top was windswept, hardpacked, and icy. The entire bottom half was brown with zero snow except for the few green runs with manmade snow on them.
We’ll definitely be back! I’ve had a good run of great snow over the past 20 years, so I guess it was my turn to come up snake eyes. It’s just the risk you take with an advanced planned family vacation.
