Winter Olympics Start at Whistler Two Years from Now

A pre-Olympic look at Canada's Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort.

Two years from today, the first events of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games will take place in Vancouver, Cypress Mountain and Whistler. The opening ceremony will have happened two years from yesterday. There's a fascinating backstory to Whistler, the Alpine and Nordic skiing and bobsled luge venue.

Some 45 years ago, four Vancouver businessmen had what be considered a dream of Olympian proportions. They envisioned the sleepy summer resort region that is now Whistler as the site for a future Winter Olympic Games. This might have seemed pie-in-the-sky dreaming, because it had no road, electricity or sewer system (those came in 1962), let alone ski lifts (those came three years later).

Whistler is now a huge year-round resort community with three village centers, North America's two mightiest ski mountains, abundant summer recreational opportunities and city-quality dining, nightlife and lodging. And yes, that long-held dream has come true. Two winters from now (February 12-28), Whistler will host the skiing and sledding events for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Before and after the Games, the spotlight continues to shine on this mega-resort. Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains are North America's only ski mountains with base-to-summit verticals exceeding 5,000 feet, plus fully interchangeable lift tickets and direct lift access from Whistler Village.

With such enormous verticals, temperature and precipitation vary. Trails cut through the heavily forested lower mountains rely on snowmaking, even as cloud-light snow falls frequently into a dozen lift-served high alpine bowls and snowfields near the summits. In between are miles of cruising runs, mogul fields, tame beginner slopes and a flock of terrain parks and pipes.

Beginning next winter, the jaw-dropping, 2.73-mile Peak to Peak gondola will link the two mountains, soaring high over Fitzsimmons Creek via the world's greatest unsupported span between towers of any gondola on the planet. The lower section of the Fitzsimmons Creek drainage also harbors the new Olympic bobsled/luge track and a fantastic zipline winter adventure. Ziptrek Ecotours has subtly placed platforms and suspension bridges and 10 zipline cables through the old-growth temperate rainforest.

Other off-slope adventures include cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, skating on Green Lake, bungee jumping, dog sledding, sybaritic spa treatments and, of course, shopping. Guests can enjoy a full winter vacation without ever stepping onto skis or strapping on a snowboard.
Upscale and international Whistler is being further upgraded for the Olympics. The scenic but twisting Sea to Sky Highway from Vancouver to Squamish on the coast is being widened and somewhat tamed, and new and renovated accommodations are legion.

Whistler now boasts large, serious luxurious hotels such as the Fairmont Chateau Whistler and the Pan Pacific Village Centre and also fine boutique properties such as the Adara Hotel or the First Tracks Lodge. It's more challenging to find budget lodging at Whistler these days, though Squamish on the coast offers some and Tourism Whistler promotes multi-day deals in all but the highest of high seasons.

The bottom line is that skiers, snowboarders, thrill-seekers and those who enjoy the mountain environment are already benefiting from the fulfillment of that long-ago dream of four Vancouver businessmen -- and will continue to do so long after the Olympic flame is extinguished.

Airport Security Reportedly Snooping on Computers

A respected blog called Upgrade: Travel Better" has a scary report about government security snoops lifting information from laptops, cell phones and other information-storing electronic devices. Called "Your laptop is a suitcase: How the U.S. government is searching computers, phones, and other electronics at the border," it gives an example of an alleged incident earlier reported on msnbc.com when "federal agents" copied passwords and files from a traveler's laptop at San Francisco International Airport. If there's even a shred of truth to this, it is appalling and frightening. However, I'm not impressed with msnbc.com's fact checking, as I posted in "A Wealth of Misinformation from a Noted Travel 'Expert'." On the credibility side, there is an indication that the Washington Post might originally have broken this story. Read it and judge for yourself.

February 11, 2008 Update: This issue is gaining traction. CNN.com just released "Suit: Airport searches of laptops, other devices intrustive," a report on a lawsuit filed in federal court by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus accusing the Customs and Border Protection arm of the Department of Homeland of "lengthy questioning and intrusive searches."

Rick Steves Coming to Colorado

Noted author and TV travel show host is on the American book tour circuit.

Rick Steves really is a guru. When he ambles genially about Europe on his Public Television travel program, viewers want to follow. And when Americans do pack their bags, they often take a Rick Steves travel guidebook.

He is on a book tour now to promote Europe Through the Back Door 2008 ($21.95 from Avalon Travel) and Europe 101: History and Art for the Traveler ($24.95 from Avalon Travel). He will be at the Tattered Cover in LoDo on Wednesday, February 27 at 5:00 to answer questions and sign books. Free tickets will be handed out at 4:00 p.m. Seating for the presentation prior to the book signing is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis to ticketed customers only.

Airlines: The Best and the Worst

The US Department of Transportation releases an annual Air Travel Consumer Report listing the best and worst airlines in terms of passenger complaints and performance records. Here's what I find the most interesting part of the 2007 list. In fairness, airlines' on-time records are sometimes a function ot the weather and traffic at airports they serve, but there really isn't much of an excuse to be made for chronically mishandled luggage or zealous overbooking that results in excessive involuntary bumping:

Lost or otherwise mishandled luggage (per 1,000 passengers)

The Top Five

1. Hawaiian Airlines, 3.41
2. Aloha Airlines, 3.88
3. AirTran Airways, 4.06
4. Northwest Airlines, 5.01
5. JetBlue Airways, 5.23

The Bottom Five

1. Mesa Airlines, 10.46
2. Skywest, 10.87
3. Atlantic Southeast, 11.24
4. Comair, 11.40
5. American Eagle, 13.55

Passengers involuntarily bumped or denied boarding (per 10,000 passengers)

The Top Five

1. JetBlue Airways, .02
2. AirTran Airways, .15
3. Hawaiian Airlines, .17
4. Aloha, .29
5. United, .71

The Bottom Five

1. Mesa Airlines, 1.54
2. Skywest, 1.69
3. Delta Air Lines, 2.47
4. Comair, 3.15
5. Atlantic Southeast, 4.50

On-time performance (measured in percentage of flights)

The Top Five

1. Hawaiian, 93.3%
2. Aloha, 92.2
3. Southwest, 80.1
4. Frontier, 77.6
5. Delta, 76.9

The Bottom Five

1. American Eagle, 69.1%
2. American, 68.7
3. US Airways, 68.7
4. Comair, 67.9
5. Atlantic Southeast, 64.7

United to Begin Charging for Second Checked Bag

$25 fee for second bag socks it to flyers -- fortunately after ski season is over.

United Airlines' newest surcharge will be $25 for checking a second bag on domestic and North American routes -- except for priority members of the carrier's MileagePlus program (that means flying a minimum of 25,000 miles per year). These privileged passengers still will be able to check a second bag for free. United pioneered charging for the convenience of curbside check-in and also led the way to adding fuel surcharges. Now this!

According to an Associated Press report, about one-quarter of United's passengers check a second bag. AP also quoted John Tague, United's chief revenue officer, as saying that the new policy "enables us to competitive fares to everyone." An argument could be made that extracting a mandatory extra $25 each way from one-quarter of their passengers is not exactly customer-friendly. Or maybe they are planning to buy some more pretzels with the $100 million additional anticipated annual revenue.

Unless passengers set up such a howl that the mighty United relents, recants and reverses itself on this, the new surcharge will kick on May 5 for tickets purchased after this coming Monday. The only small consolation for skiers flying United to Colorado or elsewhere in the Rockies this winter is that the surcharge will apply after the ski season is over.

Current airline policies count one ski/snowboard bag and one boot bag as one piece of luggage. If United continues this policy into the 2008-09 ski season, charging 25 bucks for each actual piece, that would add $50 each way, per person, to the cost of a ski trip. Now get this: In addition to the $25 to check a second bag, United will be charging $100 apiece for each additional checked bag. If the airline chooses to count ski/snowboards and boot bags as two items rather than one, that could add a total of $125 each way to each skier's cost of flying.

It could be a boon for equipment-rental businesses in ski country if visitors decide not to bring their own gear.

Snow, Wind and Sunshine on a Swiss Glacier

Skiing fresh snow on the Steinberg Glacier.

It was springtime in the Alps a few days ago when we skied Adelboden. Winter arrived in Engelberg yesterday. It blew in with a vengeance – low-slung snow clouds hung just over the valley floor, flattening the light and erasing the line between sky and earth on the slopes high above the treeline. New snow fell hard and covered old snow. Skiers and riders cheered.

The snow fell for hours covering the hardpack, the bare spots and the chop from earlier storms, but visibility continued to be non-existent almost all day. Because so much skiing is above the treeline, without definition, it is difficult, often impossible, to tell where the sky ends and the snow surface starts. Skiing by Braille, I call it. "Like skiing inside a ping-pong ball" added one of my colleagues. In the late afternoon, as the lifts closed, the clouds parted and the setting sun kissed the high peaks. Today carried great promise.

This morning indeed dawned with clear skies and radiant sunshine -- and high-mountain winds in the wake of the retreating snowstorm and in advance of the warm North African winds that are forecast. We formed up at 8:30, stood in a long Sunday morning line and, with dozens of our closest ski companions rode a succession of three lifts (one six-passenger gondola and two cable cars) from the village of Engelberg (1,050 meters, 2,445 feet) to the top of Klein Titlis (3,028 meters, 9,934 feet).

With a vertical of nearly 7,000 feet -- unheard of in North America -- the weather up high and the weather in the valley are vastly different. A mellow breeze whispered around the village of Engelberg, but the wind was howling, pluming yesterday's storm into cold white smoke at the summit. It raked yesterday's new snow off some slopes and packed it onto others. Even some places on the marked, groomed pistes were covered with machine-packed powder, while other spots were blown clean. Fortunately, temperatures were not too low, because that would have made for wicked windchill.

The highest of Engelberg's two-stage gondola and two cable cars is the Rotair. Its round cabin makes a slow 360-degree turn between its bottom and top stations. I don't know the dynamics at other times, but this morning, I found it to be a weird ride. The kind of adapted American pop music that Europeans favor for après-ski doodled through the sound system. People yelled and shouted to their companions. It got me to thinking about tram rides I've taken at Snowbird and Jackson Hole, where the obligatory American safety cautions are followed by reverential silence. Riders who speak at all do so in hushed tones. Not so this time, where random noise distracted from thoughts of the long glacier run we were about to ski.

Engelberg offers a bastion of off-piste opportunities -- glaciers, chutes bowls and couloirs lure strong skiers and riders. In the US and Canada, people who venture into the ungroomed, avalanche-vulnerable backcountry usually carry wear tranceivers and carry shovels. Like most visitors, we went with guides who know the way. Peter and Regula Reinle -- both locals and former ski instructors, intimately acquainted with the mountain -- led us down the Steinberg glacier, avoiding crevasses and known slide areas and out a tricky ski-out. In all, we skied 4,000 vertical feet of wild terrain in one run.

We ducked under the rope (permitted in Switzerland) and onto the glacier. The upper section is an enormous white bowl scooped out of the upper reaches of Klein Titlis. Today, it was overlaid with nearly a foot of new snow -- some windpacked, some loose. A few turns and we were in a rock-rimmed white world from which all signs of the hand of man had disappeared -- the cable car with its annoying music and loud riders, the huge summit structure where the cable car docks, its four restaurants, gift shop and more retail opportunities, and the microwave tower. On the glacier, the silence set in, broken only by the muffled gah-phumph of each turn.

Time is suspended on a run like this. Some skiers make swooping arc turns down the fall line -- steep at the head of the glacier, gentling lower down -- but I am a more deliberate skier. I prefer to traverse a bit between turns, because I like the feeling of first tracks through a patch of unchopped snow. I also like to take it easy to take in the jaw-dropping scenery and to savor the experience that we simply don't have in the US.

After a while, the glacier necked down between rock walls, falling into a short, steep drop at the foot of the icefield. Above us were vertical cliffs of bare rock. Our route opened again into another smaller snowfield, necked down once more into a natural halfpipe and skirted around some more rocks and the first few tenacious bushes and then small trees. A series of small drops, flats and rolls fed down into the flat, mid-mountain valley and the frozen-over surface the lake called Trübsee, the Iglu Village that I posted about yesterday and a horizontal quad that traverses the lake, ferrying skiers and riders from one the lift sector to another.

The sense of wildness was gone in an instant -- like flicking a switch from the deep backcountry to an extensively developed mountain. Was it the best powder run of my life? Not really. I liken Rocky Mountain powder to the lightest down comforter, while Alpine powder is denser and heavier, more like one filled with regular feathers. Was it the best scenically and experientially? For sure, it was one one of the top three ever.

We hopped into the transfer lift and wormed through another killer line to the middle cable car, and by then it was almost lunchtime. It was just before noon, and the wind had picked up to 60 kilometers per hour. The mountain company closed the upper chairlifts (the round Rotair can actually operate in higher winds than some of the other lifts). Lunch, a little more skiing in the mid-mountain gale and then down to the village on the long ski-out. It makes a long, looping detour -- windfree this afternoon -- around dramatic banded cliffs, through the forest, past a sheltered beginner area without sun or great views but no wind either. It ends up at the bottom station of the lowest cable car.

The new snow made me wonder what was happening at home. According to today's Colorado ski reports, Wolf Creek got 31 inches of new snow in the last 48 hours, Monarch 20 inches, Purgatory/Durango Mountain Resort 13 inches, Telluride 12 inches, the Aspen areas 9 to 11 inches and the areas closer to the Continental Divide along the I-70 corridor receuved new snow in the single digits. It would be lighter and more powdery than what fell onto, and blew around, Engelberg's mountains. But then, at home, there are no wild white glaciers to ski.

Home Sweet Dome of Snow

Spend a night or have a meal in a Swiss igloo.

Most European structures are built to last for centuries, but the four Iglu (German for "igloo") Villages in Switzerland and one in Germany are meant to last only for a winter season. Snow is packed on the outside of huge, inflated balloon-like forms, which are then deflated to create enormous semi- domes of hard snow. Several are connected to one another to form a "village" comprising bar, lounges, private and shared bedrooms, dining room/restaurant, kitchen, hot tub room and chapel. A hot tub in a building of snow and ice. What a combination!

The effort is enormous -- requiring about 2,700 hours to build each village. In keeping with the igloo/Inuit theme, the walls are etched with indigenous Canadian designs. Foam pads, thick fur throws and down sleeping bags are placed on snow/ice platforms. Candlelight and the opportunity to spend a night on the mountain -- or at least enjoy a drink (their white Glühwein is really tasty) or a fondue dinner (right) before heading back to town where you'll find accommodations all have central heating and running water.

In addition to here in Engelberg, locations are Davos, Gstaad and Zermatt in Switerland and the Zugspitze near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. There are four grades of accommodation, with per-person rates in all locations are CHF 149 for a standard (shared) accommodation on weeknights, CHF 179 on Friday and Saturady nights. Romantik, Romantik-Plus and Romantik-Suite (private whirlpool tub featured) rates are CHF 239-470 Monday through Thursday nights and CHF 279-510 on Friday and Saturday nights. A night in an Iglu doesn't come cheap, but the experience: priceless.