It sounded like someone was throwing boulders at my window. The morning was dark and dreary, and the rain pounded against the glass. I checked the weather and saw that it was 2 degrees (Celsius, of course), which is the kind of cold that makes you not want to leave your bed. It was 7 o’clock in the morning, and I was supposed to be going zip lining in Whistler at noon.
Truthfully speaking, I couldn’t think of anything worse than zip lining in such weather. Part of me desperately wanted to cancel, and the other part of me knew that this was par for the course with traveling: The weather is always going to be incredibly unpredictable, and you need to decide what’s worth it and how to make the most of where you are.
I went into town and grabbed a coffee at a place called Lift when suddenly the rain had stopped, and instead it started to snow. These snowflakes that started falling were as big as pinecones, and even the locals were surprised, saying it was one of the first times this season that it has actually snowed in the village itself. (I learned that rain in the village is a good thing, because then it means that it is snowing up top at the mountain peaks. Science 101.)
After some serious deliberation over coffee and chatting over What’s App with my friend Lydia, I decided to go through with my planned excursion and go zip lining in Whistler. It was at most a couple of hours, and if it was really that bad and ill-advised given the weather, then tours most likely wouldn’t go out. But I wanted to be prepared, so I went and bought another pair of socks and a super warm shirt made from merino wool to ensure – or attempt to ensure – that I wouldn’t freeze to death.
I went zip lining with Superfly, a company that operates as part of The Adventure Group, which also runs a variety of other activities year round including snowmobiling and heli skiing in winter or white water rafting tours in the summer. One of the more popular activities is the zip lining, and given the year’s warmer winter months, many of the activities closed earlier than usual, which made zip lining the king activity for the season.
Photo Credit: Tourism Whistler / Chad Chomlack
The base of the zip line course was about 10 minutes or so outside of Whistler Village, and upon arriving I met the two guides who would head out with me and two other brave souls (I was genuinely surprised two people voluntarily signed up for zip lining in winter) for the afternoon high up in the trees: Touhey, a Kiwi in Whistler on the work and holiday visa, and Geoff, a Vancouver native. We received a rundown of the course, of the ziplines themselves, on the equipment and how to use it, and on what to do, like how to arrive safely at the end of a line.
Zip lining was one thing I had never done before. When I was living in South Korea, my friends and I did a high ropes course in which we received our instructions and safety briefings entirely in Korean, and then were sent up into the trees without being the least bit prepared for what was ahead. (We literally had to snowboard between two trees.)
Once the briefings were done, we piled into an old army truck and made our way into the mountains to start the course. The higher up we went, the more snow there was, and the truck was like this little engine that could chugging away as it wound its way through the forest until we arrived at the first zip line.
This was, by far, one of the most magical surroundings I’ve ever been in. We were deep inside a rainforest (yes, you read that right – a rainforest) with these magnificently tall trees towering high above our heads like skyscrapers. I felt like we were at the ends of the earth. The world was still and spectacularly quiet – the kind that makes the cold ever so noticeable and beautiful, and the kind of cold that makes me love the serenity that winter brings. I thought of Penn Sate, and of how some of the most magical moments were ones where I left the library in the early hours of the morning to a snowfall that no one else on campus knew about.
The course was a series of four zip lines, the first of which was at the highest elevation. The first zip line, the highest of the four, disappeared into the clouds so that we couldn’t see where it ended. Though the thrill isn’t quite the same as bungee jumping or skydiving — both of which were activities I did during my five weeks in New Zealand — a puddle of excited nerves still rippled its way through my bloodstream as I geared up to head down the first line.
Stupidly, I forgot to zip my jacket all the way up, so my face suffered slightly as the cold wind and the snow slapped my cheeks and chin silly. At one point I was afraid that I hadn’t gained enough speed and momentum to make it all the way to the finish, but that wasn’t the case. I slammed full force and full of energy to the platform. Though I couldn’t take in the scenery as much as I would probably be able to had the skies been clear, I still enjoyed the ride. There was something romantic about not being able to see the valley below me, as if Whistler had a secret that it wasn’t going to give up so easily. Instead, I had to chase it.
And so I did, with three more zip lines. My favorite of the four was probably the third zip line, though I was obsessed with the snow-covered boardwalk between the first and second zip line. It look like the pages of calendars I used to hang on my wall as a kid when I spent my days dreaming of far off places that were a 180 to the streets of Brooklyn that ran rampant and wild just outside my window.
Never did a place look so beautiful as Whistler did the afternoon of my zipline. What’s more is that it felt like the world belonged to us and only us, sealed off from the outside by the fortress of trees that protected us and held in the silence of the forest. There is nothing more you can ask for as a traveler than to feel like the world is yours, if only for a moment in time.
