There's never a dull moment in Justice: in the last 9 days we've been evicted, the eviction has been cancelled, and almost all of the snow in the village has melted. The sky has been clear for all this week, and according to the forecast it's set to continue. Bearing in mind the conditions, the riding has been pretty good, concentrated almost exclusively on the 7th Heaven, Glacier and Crystal areas of Blackcomb.
Following our lesson on Wednesday 29th, Andy and I hatched a plan to film our efforts on the rail. Bob is currently the most accomplished jumper, and with him in Vancouver for a few days we thought it would be amusing to create a little video of us railsliding, which he had never seen us do.
The only other thing worth mentioning about Wednesday night was that we finally decided to tell Dawn that we intended to charge her for the wood we had bought, as the contract stipulated that she would provide firewood, and we had been without since Christmas.
We spent Thursday 30th back in the park on Whistler, filming park-benches, rails and 180s from every angle we could think of. When we thought we had enough for a little video we headed down over the kickers that the instructor had shown us the previous day, and on one of these Andy injured himself slightly, so headed back down to the village.
I did a quick run up the Peak chair, but the snow wasn't great so I returned home to start editing the video. When I got back Andy showed me a letter from Dawn, saying that we weren't getting any wood because the contract was void as far as she was concerned.
While we were editing the video Dawn rang, and spoke to Andy. Despite his diplomacy, the call ended with us being evicted. It sounds like a bit of a blow, but the eviction was far from legal, so we weren't too worried - we planned to take it to arbitration anyway.
When the video was finished and online we went to the gym, then ate out at Blacks with Mike Dick.
Friday 31st was another late start, but we didn't miss much as the visibility was pretty poor up on the Glacier, and the snow wasn't great anywhere else. Andy and I had a few good runs down the Crystal area, then paused for a great lunch at the Crystal Hut.
It began with the usual steak sandwich and roasted vegetables, but after 2 glasses of wine, a shot of Grand Marnier and half a waffle each, we decided we had better set off down. We descended slowly, and luckily got back to the village without any serious injury.
Mike Dick hosted a great sushi party in the evening - Andy, Emily and I joined Mike Maclean, Lexi, Nasya and others, and spent the evening rolling and eating sushi, and drinking warm sake.
We got home to find our long-lost Bob had finally returned, and had brought Dom with him. Everyone was pretty tired though, so we soon crashed out.
Andy, Emily, Bob and I spent most of Saturday 1st on 7th Heaven and Crystal, leaving a rather ill Dom behind in the house. In the evening Dom drove Bob and me down to Vancouver, where we chilled out at his place for a while before meeting up with Ingrid and Meg and heading on to a party where we saw Curtis, Amber, Jer, Mack, Patrick, Shannon and all of the usual suspects. Meg and I left at about 02:30, but Bob carried on through the night, visiting 5 or 6 more parties!
Meg had to work on Sunday, so I met up with Dom and we went in search of Bob. When we found him he was looking pretty good considering he'd been up all night! We extracted him from the continuing party and did a bit of shopping before sitting down in front of the PS2 at Dom's. Bob got the bus back to Whistler so he could play football, but I spent most of the afternoon at Dom's, then drove back up in the evening with Meg.
Andy, Bob, Meg and I went up Blackcomb on Monday 4th. We met up with Matt and Stan and the six of us spent the day on the 7th Heaven and Crystal chairs. In the evening we were all exhausted, so collapsed in front of the TV and watched Heat.
Bob and I dropped Meg off for her Greyhound at about 10:15 on Tuesday 4th, then headed up Blackcomb again, where we met Stan and Matt (again). Bored of the usual runs, we headed to the extreme skiers' left on 7th Heaven, into Lakeside Bowl. Stan and I discovered some potentially good snow, but it looked like it would require a hike to make the most of it.
When the others stopped at the Horstman Hut for a drink, I took the Showcase T-Bar up, hiked over into the Glacier Bowl, then climbed to the ridge high above the windlip to see if I could drop down into the decent snow in Lakeside Bowl. I found I hadn't gone far enough along the ridge to get into the good snow, so set off along the top. I must have climbed for about 40 minutes before I found a sign telling me I was in a permanently closed area, and my pass would be confiscated if I was caught. I quickly retraced my steps and rode down to the windlip and back to the top of the Showcase T-Bar where I met the others.
After one run on Showcase Bob and Matt decided to go home, so Stan and I hiked back into Glacier Bowl in another attempt to get to Lakeside Bowl. This time we hiked right to the end of the windlip, then rode down to an area we'd seen people hiking from before on the extreme right of the bowl. We climbed for 20-30 minutes, finally arriving at a saddle high above Glacier Bowl. To our surprise the terrain was very rocky and there was no chance of riding from the top, so we had to carry on walking down the other side. After a few more minutes the rocks disappeared, and we rode down into the snow we'd been aiming for.
It was probably the best snow we'd seen for a week or two, but I'm not really sure it was worth the effort! After my accident I'm very wary of rocks, so even when we saw areas of untracked snow I wasn't very confident. After some decent snow it might be worth the hike, but I think for the moment it's probably not.
I went up on my own Wednesday 5th, and spent the first few runs practising 180s on the Showcase and Horstman T-Bars. I met Matt and Stan at the top of 7th Heaven and we blasted down Panorama a few times, before heading back over to the Glacier where we all practised more 180s. Matt hurt his knee landing on the nose of his board and went home, so Stan and I rode Jersey Cream a couple of times before meeting Kinga and Josh for lunch at Rendezvous.
Bob and Mike joined us in the afternoon, and Mike lead us at full pace down Ridge Runner and Rock'n'Roll a few times, leaping off every possible bump. When we got down we dropped Stan off at home, then as we passed though the Market Place car park a massive pick-up truck with a skidoo ramp reversed into the car, tearing a hole in the roof above the passenger seat, where I happened to be sitting. The father of the girl driving the truck owns a bodyshop, so we're hoping we can get it fixed without too much hassle.
We went back to Mike's to recover from the crash, then after a visit to the gym we had take-away sushi and The Wasabe Challenge before settling down to watch Lilo & Stitch.
Thursday 6th began with an unexpected phone call. As we sat around having breakfast, Dawn rang up and spoke to Bob. She told him that she realised the arbitration process would probably carry on until after we'd left, so she would like to forget the eviction and collect our rent for February. This came as a complete surprise, but will hopefully mark the end of the hostilities.
Bob, Andy and I went up Blackcomb again, enjoying another day of clear blue sky and glorious sunshine. We met Rola and Matt on the way up, then bumped into Stan again at the top of 7th Heaven. This time we took the helmet-cam with us, and spent the morning filming some ridiculously fast runs down Cloud Nine and Panorama on 7th Heaven - we still have some way to go before we get the best from the helmet-cam, but we already have some great shots.
After lunch at the Horstman hut we filmed a couple of runs down Ridge-Runner and Rock'n'Roll, then headed down for a session in the gym and then a great chilli.
When we saw Dawn getting home I went outside and gave her the rent, and things seemed quite amicable. She paid us $90 for the wood we've had to buy and when I said that I hoped we could patch things up she said that it might be possible.
Later we met up with Rola and both Matts for some crazy drinking in Citta, then returned home and played golf on the PS2 until about 03:00.
Friday 7th dawned clear and sunny again, but the combination of the previous night and the continuing lack of snow meant that we didn't leave until 10:30. We spent yet another day on Blackcomb's Glacier, Crystal and 7th Heaven areas, but the snow is now getting pretty bad. Over the last week it's been OK most of the time as it's stayed below freezing up on the higher slopes, but the temperature has now gone up and even the highest runs are now getting a bit icy.
We had a great lunch at the Crystal Hut, then Andy headed down to drive to Vancouver, while Bob, Matt, Stan and I paid a quick visit to the terrain park. | 
