Given this will be the last Outsider while the alpine lifts are still spinning on Whistler Mountain, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on the season that was 2023-24. At risk of rewriting the annual ski-season review penned by my Pique colleague G.D. Maxwell, I’ll do my best to keep it short.
To sum this past winter, it was a season of one-hit wonders. No ongoing storms that kept on giving. Very few snowfalls followed by heroic, high-pressure weather (the sunny days that actually stay somewhat cold). Unseasonal warming events were par for the course, turning pow to sun-baked mush and destabilizing snowpacks before anyone really got the chance to ski it properly.
The locals got some, of course. If you had the luxury of easy access to the hill mid-week, you probably got a handful of the hero days. But timing was everything. When we missed the window, we threw our arms up in the air and patiently waited for another reset. A couple of those resets came in hard and fast, burying us temporarily, but leaving creeks and crevasses still lurking for most of the season. Again, it was pretty good on the day, but by the time the storm subsided, temperatures were again through the roof.
While I did my darndest to make the best out of a—let’s face it—pretty poor winter, I did fire up my sled more than I was expecting given the decimation the rain caused earlier in the season. I learned the humbling experience of trying to get a snowmobile unstuck on deep powder days; digging, pulling, rolling, digging again... But these days also had their high points, namely managing to immerse my entire body (plus a 200-kilogram machine) in one of the most surreal white rooms I’ve ever experienced. And yes, all the money, all the hassle and all the backbreaking work of sledding was worth it.
The 2023-24 season was the worst snow year in 20 years (I still think 2004-05 was more dismal than 2014-15, though some may disagree), but the best thing about living in Whistler is even in the worst years, you’ll always get more than zero days of great skiing. So thanks Whistler Blackcomb for keeping the mountain running as well as you did throughout all the rain events. The idiot YouTubers who kept posting videos of the snowless base areas (when it was pow in the alpine) don’t deserve these amazing mountains.
Spring has been a more definitive shift for me this year. With the winter trend of high freezing levels carrying on into April and May and the access to many ski-touring and sled zones drying up, it’s given me the opportunity to reunite with my mountain bikes a little earlier than usual. Biking is a bigger deal for me this year given my two shoulder surgeries in 2023 sidelining me for the entirety of spring, summer and fall. And wow does it feel good to be rolling again.
I’m not sure what’s got me more excited. Maybe it’s the fact I have a new bike getting put together in the coming days. Maybe it’s the brand-spanking-new, bike-ready chairs getting loaded onto the new Fitzsimmons Express prior to the Whistler Mountain Bike Park’s opening day. Or maybe it’s just getting back to riding my bikes four or five times a week. After a summer of downtime last year, I’d almost forgotten how uplifting it can be to climb and descend the West Side trails after work.
Like many who come back after injury and extended periods of rehab, the hardest part of getting back into biking isn’t the fitness to climb or the upper-body strength to handle Whistler’s relentlessly steep descents. It’s confidence. Rock slabs and chutes I’ve hit dozens of times over the years are all of a sudden getting into my head. There comes a point when you simply have to take a deep breath, roll in, and remember all the other times you came booking out of the line with a big-ass smile on your face.
Besides getting comfortable with the gnar again and getting ready for a big year of riding the Bike Park’s 25th season of operation, I’m also excited to participate in WORCA’s 2024 Back Forty race. There’ll be more on that after I’ve put my body through the ringer on June 8, so until then, I’d better keep up on these after-work training laps.
Damn it feels good to be back in the saddle.
Vince Shuley is feelin’ it. For questions, comments or suggestions for The Outsider, email [email protected] or Instagram @whis_vince.
