Travel: Canada's terrifying bobsleigh course

The official venue for the bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events at the 2010 Winter Olympics, it consists of a couple of low-rise buildings and a thin, 1.5km long ribbon of brilliantly illuminated ice that winds its way down the south east slope of Blackcomb Mountain through stands of giant pine trees. In the past, I've struggled to understand the appeal of these blink-and-you'll-miss-it ice sliding sports, but watching the Canadian national skeleton team testing out their new home run, I can see what the fuss is about.

Spectators can get to within a few feet of the action, and once you've chosen a viewing spot it's all about the anticipation. First, a faint hum echoes down the track as the slider begins his or her descent, then a low rumble that gets gradually louder until BOOM, a lycra-clad human missile flies past your nose at 135km/hr. As vicarious thrills go, it makes Formula One seem tame.

After watching Team Canada negotiating banked turns and blisteringly fast straights for an hour or so, I am invited to ride to the top of the hill with the athletes in the back of a truck they're using as a shuttle bus so I can witness the all-important starts. As we bump along, I ask the sliders which one of them was most likely to win an Olympic medal. The top men's competitor, it emerges, is John Montgomery, while among the women, it's Mellisa Hollingsworth.

Whistler has bid to host the Winter Olympics twice before, first in 1968 and then again in 1976. Failure must have tasted bitter at the time, but, taking the long view, it's probably just as well things worked out the way they did. Given some of the monstrous buildings that were being thrown up beside ski hills in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and considering how small Whistler still was back then, a successful bid could easily have turned the town into a giant blot on the landscape as developers raced to build enough infrastructure to accommodate the Olympic circus. By 2003, when Whistler's bid to host the 2010 games in conjunction with the city of Vancouver was accepted, the town had become one of North America's premier ski resorts and – significantly – one which prided itself on its urban parks, green credentials and relatively low-impact architecture. With its 6,000-plus rental accommodation units, 90-plus restaurants and pubs and 200-plus shops, the resort hosts more than two million visitors each year, yet it still somehow manages to feel like a village.

As well as the Sliding Centre, Whistler has two other Olympic venues: Whistler Olympic Park, which will play host to the biathlon, ski jumping and cross country skiing events, and Whistler Creekside, which will host the alpine skiing.

One of the first things you notice when you arrive at the Olympic Park, a short drive out of Whistler in the picturesque Callahan Valley, is the way totem poles have been incorporated into the design of the Daylodge and the Cross Country Competition Centre. The organisers of the 2010 Games have worked closely with the people whose ancestral lands they are making use of. In many ways, this involvement has been symbolic: in addition to the architectural references, the mascots for the games, Miga, Quatchi and Sumi, are based on characters from First Nations mythology, while the winners' medals will feature West Coast aboriginal designs based on art by British Columbian artist Corrine Hunt. But this involvement also takes a more concrete form. In 2002, the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation and the Province of British Columbia signed the historic Shared Legacies Agreement, in acknowledgement of the fact that 14 of the 20 events of the Winter Olympics would take place on land shared by people of the Lil'wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Among a range of benefits, the agreement included the establishment of an Aboriginal Youth Sports Legacy Fund and a 3 million contribution towards the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre – a stunning building that is a mix of traditional and modern styles and now stands on Blackcomb Way in Whistler.

Much of the credit for these initiatives must go to Tewanee Joseph, a longstanding member of the Squamish Nation Council who cajoled aboriginal leaders from all over south-western British Columbia to come together under the banner of the Four Host First Nations – a non-profit organisation set up to ensure that indigenous culture and traditions were represented and respected when the Winter Olympics came to town.

"This is all part of our transformation, of where we're going," he tells me. "It is the biggest honour for us to have a worldwide event that has aboriginal art incorporated into it. We hope this will make people from all over the world want to find out more about us."

It's with the alpine skiing events that Whistler really comes into its own. At Whistler Creekside, the women will compete on a new course combining sections of three popular pistes, Jimmy's Joker, Wildcard and Franz's Run, while the men take on the Dave Murray course, named after the former Olympian and Whistler director of skiing.

Even though there had been a fresh dump of snow the night before my last day and the backcountry was calling, I still did my journalistic duty and had a crack at the Dave Murray, billed as "one of the most challenging and respected courses on the international ski racing circuit". At just over 3km long, and with an average slope gradient of just under 30 degrees, it's a thigh-shredding proposition, yet the Olympians will be expected to complete it in just 33 turns. I took about 133 turns to get to the bottom, but consoled myself with a hike into the area of the mountain known as the Symphony Amphitheatre and a blast through knee-deep powder in the little slice of heaven they call Flute Bowl.

That's the beauty of Whistler: with 8,171 skiable acres to go at, there will always be fresh tracks to be had somewhere, even when all the best skiers in the world are in town in search of Olympic glory.

THE FACTS

Return flights from London to Vancouver from 621(www.aircanada.com). Tourism Whistler is currently offering a five-night/four-day package that includes five nights' accommodation and a four-day lift ticket at any time between now and 18 April (excluding 12-28 February) starting at 389 per person. Bookings to be made no later than 31 January (www.whis-tler.com). For Winter Olympics venues, visit www.vancouver2010.com and for British Columbia, visit www.Brit-ishColumbia.travel

This article first appeared in the Scotsman on Saturday 2 January, 2010