Words & Photos by Emily Kane.

Everyone’s perception of paradise is different. Some may picture their nirvana as lying on a beach sippin’ a big ol margarita, while for me the place I live in is truly my paradise.  Whistler is awesome. It seems everyone living here shares the same vision.  With that said, it’s important to venture outside of the Whistler bubble from time-to-time; if not just to experience new things, but to appreciate what we have.  This journey began with what any epic tale starts with: a road trip.

Any good road trip has to have a mind-blowing destination.  What better way to get stoked on a trip then to plan it around a music festival?  So off to Coachella we went.  For those of you not familiar, Coachella is one of the biggest music festivals in North America hosting a variety of music genres.  The festival features popular, established artists as well as up-and-comers in the music industry – all endured in the heat of the desert a.k.a. Indio, California.  So with the festival on the forefront of our minds, we made our way over the border.  …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Words by Bear Smart Director Sylvia Dolson, FOB (friend-of-the-bears). Photo credits: Get Bear Smart Society. 

Whistler’s bears are not tame bears. They are once wild bears whose response to a repeated neutral stimulus – us – has diminished their wildness over time. Why? Because there’s just a lot of us around and it just takes less energy for animals to ignore non-threats than to run away or climb a tree every time they encounter us.

This form of acclimation, human-to-bear can be tricky: it’s easy for us to get a little too comfy around acclimated bears, which can lead to carelessness. Especially if you’re one person is a crowd, in say, the middle of the Village, in the dark at 2 am, with a possibility of alcohol involvement .While there’s strength in numbers, your group may still be at a disadvantage. And while, no one has ever been seriously hurt by a bear, even in these exact circumstances, the bear’s life is almost always cut short.

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With the sun coming out and vanquishing the snow from the valley, and next week’s Green Talk all about growing your own food in Whistler, now is as good a time as ever to look into the history of agriculture in Whistler. Last fall we featured a post providing a bit of an overview of the topic, so this week we’ll take a more focused look at Whistler’s most well-known farm, Tapley’s Farm. Yes, that Tapley’s Farm: the quiet residential neighbourhood which also holds the distinction of being the Whistler Valley’s first attempt at employee-designated housing.

While Alex and Myrtle Philip are widely recognized as the founders of the the community of Alta Lake (even though they were not the first settlers), fewer people are aware that Myrtle’s family, the Tapley’s were here from the beginning as well.

Myrtle's brother Phil Tapley, looking every bit the farmer that he was, July 1967.

When construction began on the Philip’s Rainbow Lodge in 1913, they were assisted by Myrtle father Sewell, and her sisters Jean and Margaret, and her brother’s Frank and Phil. Once Rainbow Lodge was completed, Sewell moved in with Alex & Myrtle, Phil returned to his home in Squamish, and Jean and Margaret moved further afield, though they returned often for visits.  …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

With the World Ski and Snowboard Festival marking the end of the ski season and swimming at the lakes still in the distance, the shoulder season for Whistlerities traditionally means vacationing or visiting family. For those of us with young children it’s a whole new travel experience, one that takes careful planning and preparation.

I’m not a planner nor am I overly organized, so shortly after I booked our trip home for the holidays to visit family with then seven week old Addie and 60lbs Truman on a stand-by flight, I started to panic. My anxiety escalated when I asked friends and family doctor for advice on travelling with an infant, “you do whatever it takes to survive” is what I was told. With that in mind I packed like a champ and researched different scenarios.

I walked on the plane with Addie in carrier firmly attached to me, an oversized diaper bag filled with toys, diapers, wipes, change of clothes for the both of us and soother (whatever it takes!) trying to apologize to people with my eyes while their glance told me “for the love of God don’t sit in my row!”. We were fortunate to get the last available seat in the back of the plane with an empty seat next to us and when we passed everyone I could literally feel them breathe a sigh of relief.

We settled into our seat and the first thing my delicate flower did was let out a thunderous smelly present down under. I rushed to the tiny lavatory changed her diaper and outfit in record time and returned to my seat just in time for take-off but without time to peel off the layers of clothes I was wearing to nurse! Needless to say, Addie didn’t get her milk until almost 30,000 feet in the air. Here are some tips that helped me survive the next five hours:

Request an empty seat next to you. It never hurts to ask when you’re checking in if your flight is fully booked. Depending on the time of travel you might be lucky with a free seat (or even row) without having to fork out extra cash!
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There’s a reason we call Joel the people’s hero.  Joel is one of those people who you always love to see around town or on the hill.  He has a passion for life that is super contagious.  He’ll never fail to greet you with a smile and he’s always good for a laugh.  I’m lucky enough to spend a great deal of time with him exploring the coast range around Whistler on snowmobiles and split boards.  His passion for life really shines through in his timeless shred style and through his eye catching graffiti art.  When you watch one of his web edits or see him in the pages of Snowboard Canada you’ll know what I mean.

Words by Dave Henkel

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Well another World Ski and Snowboard Festival has come and gone and now is the time I catch up on some well earned sleep. Here are some of the things I witnessed this week.

Few friends and I (the shark on the left) got dressed up for a friends birthday on the first Saturday of the fest…

Giraffe spotting underneath Solar Coaster chair.

Took in an awesome concert by NAS

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When the Monster Energy Shred Show rolls into town promising free energy drinks and 50,000 bucks, a gauarnteed who’s who of dirt-bagging couch-surfing Pabst-drinking snowboarders line-up to cash in. Add a 65+ foot big air jump to the mix, a notorious hip-hop crew, and an ominious date like April 20^th and the table is set for a night of Whistler proportions.

The Shred Show, in it’s third year in Whistler and second as a TTR 5-star event, closed out the World Ski & Snowboard Festival with a big air jump in Skiers Plaza and showcased the current flip-spin-win formula of snowboarding trickery. The list of heavy-hitting shreds throwing down was deep and riders were pulling out the mandatory double-corks and 1260’s just to make the finals.  …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Boarderstyle was born at the Shred Show two years ago, and the first ever victor was once again crowned champion today! Jon Versteeg battled through a foggy course to take first place.

Photos courtesy Monster Energy

The final heat included X-Games champion Kevin Sansalone, perennial powerhouse Myrosha Daley and Martin Jaureguialzo who has made every cut so far in three years of Boarderstyle. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Mike Douglas is such a hipster. If you didn’t already know this or didn’t see it coming, we have pictures to prove it and 2000 of Whistler’s finest crowd to back up our claim. From his shoes to his scarf to his Instagram how-to, host Mike made any late arriving Whistler-loc ask the same thing: “What the hell is Mike Douglas wearing?”

Ahh, but I digress before we begin. So here’s the rundown on the 16th annual Olympus Pro Photographer Showdown at the World Ski & Snowboard Festival.

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Words & photos from Josh Bauer.

With the World Ski & Snowboard Festival comes arguably one of the most exciting events of the festival, the 72 Hour Filmmakers Showdown. This year it grew and expanded to include another night of finals in which the People Choice was awarded. Votes were tallied by voting with ping ping balls, I abstained and kept my ball cause I am collecting them to do this science experiment. Serious.

Conrad Shapansky and his crew won the grand judged prize with this short film the night before and and took home $10,000 for their efforts; and rightly so they had a creative and entertaining film. It seems more often than not the films that win are creative concept films; which maybe speaks to future cotestants strategy for writing.

Long time contestant Angie Nolan and crew won the People’s Choice with a great movie about making a Canadian reality tv series; complete with Harper jokes and all. Congrats to the winners on both nights!