Top 50 Ski Resorts in North America

. . . The following day dawns even grayer, so I decide to trade skiing for an afternoon Ziptrek tour of the mountains. This will entail zipping back and forth 80 feet above a white-water river that forms a crevice between Blackcomb and Whistler mountains, harnessed to steel lines up to 1,100 feet long. Our group of 12 begins on the Blackcomb side, climbing a series of cedar walkways and supension bridges to elaborate platforms built from 300-year-old Douglas first. The soaring sensation - once you are securely strapped in and trust that your harness wont come undone and send you free-falling into the creek below - is part parachuting, part jumbo slide. It's like skydiving without the uncertainty. Our last zip line is the shortest, but there's a catch. The guide want us to attempt it upsdie down. Their instructions are nonchalant: Just lean backwards and your center of gravity will follow. A slender young guide helps me push off, and sure enough, when I do as instructed, the harness pivots, seamlessly slipping me into an inverted position. Soon my legs are slicing through the crisp air in a V. One at a time, I remove my hands from the harness, which they re white knuckling, and stretch both arms towards the river below. I scream even though I am not a screamer - because it seems wholly appropriate, a roller-coaster reflex. It occurs to me as I reach the platform at the other end, where the guides wait to break my momentum after I turn right side up again, that for an adult there are few purely heart-surging novelties like this.

"The soaring sensation is part parachuting, part jumbo slide"

That, however, was not what I had been thinking seconds earlier, rocketing through the sky, surrounded by ancient forests and glacial peaks. In those fleeing moments, all I could focus on were the cold crystals landing on my face - crystals that I recognized, finally, as snow.

Conde Nast Traveller, December 2005