Whistler Tubing

So, sometimes my husband just goes along with some wild hair I get, so when I said last night that I thought we should head up to Whistler, just for the day, just to try out the tubing park, somehow he agreed to agree with me. We packed up our gear and headed up...for the day. We've always talked about just going for the day, but we've never actually committed to it. After checking out the pre-Olympics prices, it just didn't make sense to pay those prices for this type of adventure. With a stop at the Lynden McDonalds for breakfast drive thru style, and another stop to buy gloves for me in Squamish, we made it up in three hours. Not bad at all. Easy, beautiful drive and the kids were great!

A couple things to remember about this adventure...

1. Do not always believe what Whistler advertises. We had to hike up a snow field and dodge flying skis and snowboards just to get to the area that is used for tubing. Imagine hiking through a snow field lugging Cooper in all his snow gear all the way up. Tommy wasn't much better, but at least could haul his own body up. I was huffing and puffing, sweating in all my clothes, too, just getting up the mountain.

2. The "tot area" that is described does not really exist, aside from one lane they have for kids. However, it's a full on sledding lane and parents are not allowed to ride with the little one in their tube. Cooper could barely sit in his kiddie tube, much less be expected to fly down the mountain in it by himself. So, Cooper would not be joining in on this little adventure after all. It was decided that John and I would take turns pulling him around the bottom in his tube instead. Fabulous...hmmmmm....

3. The magic carpet does not go all the way up to the top as indicated. You have to take your tube, hike up midway, scan your pass, THEN get on the magic carpet.

4. The magic carpet moves at the speed of the slug on my patio.


At about the hour mark, Tommy flopped down on his tube and announced he was done. Cooper was asleep on his tube, bundled up against the 23 degree chill. When asked if he wanted to go up again, he said, "No, it takes too long to go up. I'm cold." And that was it. We still had an hour left on our passes, but he was done. So, we woke Cooper up and started back down the mountain again. Feeling like we at least needed to make the effort, we hauled the boys through the village, John carrying Cooper and Tommy being pulled along by his coat sleeve. Thank God the Brewhouse has a train, but even that didn't quiet the whining, the fighting and the arguing from the boys. Exhausted, we blew out of town.

How do we feel about this adventure? Good experience, glad we tried it out. Would we recommend it to our friends? No, not really. Would we jump to do it again? No, probably not, unless we were already up there for something else. Am I glad we did it? Yeah, it was good to try it out, and fun to just take off and do something. Mixed results, but at least we tried.