Whistler, BC, Canada

138 days ago
	For the first time since I arrived in Vancouver I was able to leave the city and see what is beyond it. However, I must admit that the city has been good to me and leaving it was not imperative. Since Dan decided to celebrate his new job and first real paycheck in a good while by renting a monstrous truck, we decided that the beast of an SUV needed to be put to the test by going out into the wilderness that lies just beyond the city. OUr way out to Whistler, a lovely (although touristy) town 2 hours outside Vancouver was one where in car talk was mostly about how nice the scenery was. All around us were majestic mountains and glaciers with seemingly endless forests enveloping them. We quickly left the dense cloud cover of Vancouver behind and could actually see the line of clouds coming to a head against the North shore mountains. At horseshoe bay we gazed down upon a team of sailboats skirting the fog that made looking out to sea something for another day. Our first stop of note was at Squamish, directly underneath a large hunk of rock called the Chief. It was here that we realized that the chill of the mountains would be our first taste of the winter to come. A few klicks down the road we pulled off and got an amazing panorama, complete with rushing glacier fed rivers, snow capped peaks, and vertical ledges. Whistler provided a place to rest and grab a bit to eat, with an expensive lunch looking out onto the soon to be crowded ski slopes. The village itself was well organized, very commercial, and lacking in any sort of personality that screamed 'I am unique'. I have seen oodles of mountain resorts like this one, all of them beautiful but also deficient in personality. The information lady at Whistler made up for what the town didn't have in personality. A self-proclaimed bitch, she turned out to be helpful and friendly, giving us some good info on where exactly we wanted to head in the afternoon: a hotspring I had been told about by my boss. We soon found out that distance has a new meaning out here in the rugged mountains of BC. The information lady did give us accurate info on how far things were, but the time involved to get there was another story entirely. Half an hour of driving out of Whistler led us to a gravel road, where we started our trek alongside Lilloet lake. Feeling gracious, we started our dirty diversion by picking up a hitchhiker, who upon being asked where to stated simply 33. Judging by the beer in the hand and the loose swagger, we shrugged and figured this guy would warm us when he had had enough driving. I took up conversation with him, half understanding what he mumbled while Kiky sat directly to his right, with a less than happy grimace on her face. He told us of bears, cougars, and his logging adventures, all of which I found rather interesting. And then in the middle of nowhere, he asked to get out. We asked him where this was, and he stated simply 33. It took us a while to understand that people's addresses in this wilderness are km markers. I also came to realize that although I understood little of what the hitchiker had said, I was still the most fluent person in the car in the language of drunken blather. The hotsprings were a bust, with several stereotypical hicks lying around in them with no room for outsiders. However, the surrounding nature was enough to warrant the long trek we had made into this wilderness. We decided to head for home without even getting our feet wet in the St. Agnes hotsprings. As dusk was setting and the mountains were slowly turning to sillouettes, a small black bear made an appearance directly in front of our car. This bolstered everybody's feelings and made us realize exactly what rested in these forests.