Whistler Lodging

[cravenmorhead]

I was invited to speak at a conference in Vancouver at the very end of January/beginning of February, and I figured I should add a few days onto the trip to get up to Whistler, since I've never been. I'll be solo; does anyone have recommendations for cheap lodging (or floor space) or may otherwise be interested in grabbing a few beers from 2/3-2/6 or so? I likely won't have a car if I can get away without one. I was also thinking of bringing boots but renting skis to avoid all of the transport hassle, if anyone has recommendations on that front.

[kmkmkmk]

1. For sure rent skis.
2. Check out vrbo.com or homeaway.com for cheap lodging.

[nortonwhis]

If you're after cheap, I would recommend booking the hostel. its easily accessible by bus and close to a couple of breweries. It'll be the cheapest by a mile.
Theres no such thing as cheap hotels in whistler in the winter, unless its a terrible terrible winter and thne you probs won't want to be here anyway.
I think the Delta is probably the cheapest of the hotels. I would also suggest checking out some of the whistler winter groups. Housing and one called winter 2016/2017. Might be able to grab a bed from someone who fucks off to Japan for a cpl weeks.

[Vitamin I]

For cheap lodging:
I think all the hostel options are covered within
https://www.booking.com/hostels/city/ca/whistler.html and
http://www.firesidelodge.org/Welcome.html

To rent skis:
Not sure what kind of skis you seek, but in past years, I've been surprised how hard it is to find a Whistler shop that rents out super-rad freeride skis worthy of the rad Whistler terrain. The rental shops cater more to the mass market of groomer skiers, plus a few unimpressive off-piste skis within their rental/demo stock.

If you like Armada, last year there was a large fleet of decent Armada freeride skis for rent at http://coastalculturesports.com

For my tastes, the no-brainer is to reserve in advance to demo rad Prior Overlords or A-Stars for only CAD$25 + tax from https://www.priorsnow.com , but their factory location is far from the Village (although not far from a hostel), and I think you'd still need to rent poles from a regular rental shop near the lifts. Yeah, bring your own boots.

EDIT: Oops, duh. I just remembered "Club314". A lot of IF's here, but if I have time to start my idea of the Club314 ski lending library this winter at Whistler, and if your BSL is near 314mm, and if you can handle long, fat skis with heavy metal bindings, then I will make up to 55 pairs of skis available to Maggots and trusted friends of Maggots. But Club314 will be closed down (or scaled down) if it ends up taking too much of my time for repairs/tuning/etc.

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[cravenmorhead]

Thanks all, nabbed a relatively cheap AirBnB in creekside.