jgladiuk

@mxmtb: I would estimate 60% of the stores are open with the closed stores all hanging signs saying opening soon ( mid to late june ) up until day before yesterday we were riding our bikes right thru the village with no worries of coming close to anyone.. but as of Wednesday we're walking the bikes due to large groups of people wandering the village stroll. Looks very close to being back to normal numbers ... only my observation.. and today its has been raining heavily most of the day so its back to being deserted. With the 30 day extended border closure and no cruise ships etc. its going to be a very quiet summer and many of the retail outlets will be on the brink. Word is that the Fitz will open but you will have to book a 3 hour slot...

the fitz loading platform is 80% completed... workers told me the plan is to open the park late June... that's the plan. ... anything could go sideways between now and then and delay till mid July... another employee told me Vail is going to use Perisher in Aus as their template for loading chairs and keeping public safe from Covid ... contact tracing .. no walk up tix sales.. sanitizing chairs. Although its winter down there at least they'll get an idea of dealing with crowds and chairlifts and apply the best practices to our summer loading. I'm not going to call it either way but just watch and listen.

@thenotoriousmic: all clear of snow mid way up right now which is top of Fitz... top of Garbo will still have several cm is most shaded areas. More importantly though the PM and Pres just announced another 30 day extension for the border being closed and no travel into Canada from Europe as well. "Canada-U.S. border to remain closed to non-essential travel for another month, PM says it's the 'right thing' I think our PM is looking to NZ and Auz as examples of success in tamping down Covid 19.. it'll never be gone but he just wants to get a handle on it before opening up. That leaves Vail and the bike park with another 30 days to sort out how to comply with physical distancing which the governments are calling for. They are probably re-writing the pass waiver to include Covid .

OK so first and foremost this is a ski resort and the bike trails happen to be on the north slope of the Whistler foothills, opening mid May IMHO is way early and lucky to happen any bike season ( it takes a herculean effort to prepare the trails ) . Even with the snow melting on the open meadows the trails deep in the woods usually have several cm's of left over snow and this is when the small backhoe and manual labour go in to clear it. So now you have the trails being cleared but the heaviest melt is yet to come pouring off the alpine.. this results in torrents of water overflowing the creeks and ditches and don't forget this is a rain forest. So over this May 16,17,18 weekend we had our usual mix of cloud , rain and a little sun.. would have, could have, been a great weekend to open but there is no work being done on any trail that I can see from the bottom. Within a few weeks the valley gets very warm, the upper slopes have melted off and by mid to late June it's game on mother F'er.. at least that's a typical opening. This year... at the moment all bets are off. I'm a skier first and biker second... and right now I'm not even sure what next snow season will look like.. although Vail is already prompting us for our winter pass payment... and I haven't seen any email asking me for bike park payment. I will not make any guess for summer or winter activity. Just have to wait it out along with everyone else.

1. Brandon Semenuk // CAN 2. Cameron Zink // USA 3. Kurt Sorge // CAN