To opt-out of the drive and catch panoramic views of the scenery, the Sea-to-Sky Climb train travels the same route in three hours.

BBC: Vancouver after the Games

But Whistler makes for a long, expensive and potentially stressful daytrip, especially on dark winter evenings when the winding Sea-to-Sky Highway can be tricky to negotiate in a car.

BBC: Skiing near Vancouver��s city limits

Early in the day Pope Francis glided through the square in an open-top vehicle amid a sea of colored banners, including the white and sky-blue flag of his home country of Argentina.

WSJ: Pope Celebrates Inaugural Mass

And so despite my status as a running refusenik, I found myself herded, among a crowd of far fitter, healthier, sportier types, into a pen behind the start line, part of a sea of red t-shirted runners beneath a threatening gray sky.

CNN: Crossing the Olympic finish line

Its arresting first images of sea and sky evoke a vast historical arc in which her modern-day subjects mainly, a seemingly timeless horde of salt miners on their rugged and monotonous rounds gradually emerge from teeming anonymity.

NEWYORKER: Araya