Euro Ride 2008

Adam and I had to part ways yesterday and it pains me, but not nearly as much as it's going to pain him that he missed today! A flurry of choice adjectives couldn't come close to describing today's conditions. It was, without a doubt, the best I've ever encountered. The morning started with a quick ride down to the lift -- ya, the pension I'm staying at is just above the gondola -- tough, I know.





After a few minutes with the trail map I figured I'd try to cover ground today going from Kitzbuhel over to Pass Thurn -- supposedly it's 15km of lifts and 35km of vertical riding, but I figured I'd take my time at a few places -- no reason to rush. I thought I'd struck gold off my first run when I discovered untracked knee to thigh deep pow leading into a ravine that was at least waist deep.





As it turns out, this was just the beginning. I got fresh tracks on every run and I don't mean little patches of freshies, I mean top to bottom on most. A victim to incredible snow, I had to halt my journey to do a few retakes of some slopes. And though I wasn't able to hit every lift on the mountain, I figured I'd always have tomorrow to fill in the gaps.





Riding in Europe is not without its many forms of transportation I've found, and today was no different. I was treated to my own oversized Gondola -- I boarded thinking: "great, my own personal coffin." And if you don't like heights, well never fear, they provide a viewing window -- straight down. I guess so you can see the ground rushing up at you when the cable snaps...a nice touch I think.











Who builds a lift that requires an elevated path when there's plenty of good ground right next to it? The Austrians!





And why stop there when you can have a moving walkway too. I mean snow is so 2004.





Here are a few pics I took along the way. The light was really flat thanks to overcast weather all day, but the views were still magnificent.











And then a 30 minute bus ride back to Kitzbuhel. Unfortunately the lifts I missed may have to wait until another time since my legs are so tired I can barely walk, let alone ride. I can't think of a better way to end the season if this was my last day though.

A guy in Zermatt told us to venture to Chamonix for great off piste riding...so we did. We headed over with a plan to hit their most extreme mountains but found out that mountain gear is required due to the 40m drops into holes in the glacier. So we didn't do that. Instead we headed to one of the many resorts in the Chamonix Valley. Our first run was typical for us...hiking for fresh tracks.








We were the 3rd and 4th ones down this slope and the snow was great thanks to 3m of fresh powder and zero attendance for the past week. After a few more runs, some cornice drops, and more fresh tracks we opted for an adventure. Heading off piste we found some of the best snow of the trip. Once we ran out of rideable terrain we decided it would be better to walk the rest of the 2000 vertical feet down to a town roughly 15 miles away from where we started. Thankfully we found a train to take us home. An adventure indeed, but next time I think we'll take the gondola.





Adam was so excited to be down on flat ground that he mistook this grassy hill for glorious virgin powder.

Today we found the crowds as we ventured into new territory on the Swiss side of the mountain. Adding to our list of forms of transport, we started off the morning with a funicular ride and then migrated to the gondolas, chair lifts, t-bars, pumas, and sky-trams. At times the fog makes the lifts look quite eerie.








We missed taking the train, but that leaves something for next time.





Taking a break from the crowds we had lunch at an igloo. Pretty cool (no pun intended) set of caves dug into the glacier.








The way the glacier juts out from the slopes, eloquently juxtaposed against the blue sky is incredible.

Miniature electric-powered vehicles and a mountain that looks like a Disney ride -- we're at Euro Disney! Turns out it's Zermatt -- kind of similar to Disney (long lift lines, crazy outfits, tourists...).








Our first day of riding and we got fresh tracks thanks to a few inches of snow the night before. We hit the top of the matterhorn glacier via a sky-tram that made me more than a little nervous.








Here we are up at the top.








We rode over to Italy and stopped for lunch overlooking the lake at Valtournenche.





Today we managed to avoid the crowds, possibly because we were traversing across countries and outside most of the popular runs. We took a few breaks along the way to appreciate the incredible views and rest our legs from the 40+km of riding.

There I was looking at Chagall's stain glass windows and Adam, trying to figure out which one was more beautiful...have to say Chagall takes a close second.


The Duo back in action. Our starting point: Zurich. A short nights rest and off to explore the Alps.

After a several day hiatus from riding I was stoked to get some runs at the local mountain. Tryvann Vinterpark is tiny by comparison to the resorts I've ridden this season, but you can't beat the convenience -- only a 10 minute drive from Sarah and Nils' place. Fridays are half price for students and you can ride until 10PM. We rode from 5-10 and watched several local high schools battle in out in a big air competition -- free pizza and coke to boot. Would have been sweet to have this as a high school hang out.

The dictionary defines humility as "the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance, rank, etc." So to balance out all the awesome stuff I put up, here's a not so cool action shot of Greg ice skating. I blame the lack of edges on my skates, but either way it's pretty comic. This happened while skating at National Theatre in Oslo.

Totally stoked for the cabin trip Nils and Sarah had planned for my first weekend we packed up the car Friday night and then Nils, Chris, 2 Sarahs, and myself headed towards Hol. I should've known this weekend would be nothing short of action packed, but up until now I thought I only got into crazy stuff with Adam. Boy was I wrong.


After 4 hours crammed into a rental car we arrived at a mountain road that can only be described as sketchy as hell. The road is a single lane (for both directions), covered with snow, a substantial drop off one side, and a pitch steep enough that your car could slide backwards and never stop. And it was the middle of the night. Nils had definitely done this before -- he mentioned something about not loosing momentum and then gunned it up the hill, around blind corners, and nearly got us to the top. Only 100 yards from the top we got stuck and started to slide backwards. With our car wedged into the embankment to prevent it from sliding we called for help.


The locals that showed up were rather excited that it was a rental car. So how'd they get us up this hill? They spun the car 180° off the side embankment and down the hill. Let me recap that -- the car was facing up hill and wedged into a snowy embankment with a substantial drop off the other side of the road -- they spun the car around and down the hill narrowly missing where they'd parked their car. The driver then proceeded to drive the car up the hill in reverse with his head out the window Ace Ventura style.


Finally at the top we parked and prepared our gear for the 3+km trip to the cabin. We'd opted to pay for a snowmobile ride up since it was late and we had tons of gear. The snowmobile showed up pulling a sled that looked barely big enough for our stuff. We loaded the gear and then climbed on top of it. Our instructions at this point went something like: "lean into the hillside or we'll tip over!" The ride was a blast and surprisingly we managed not to tip over.





Up at the cabin the first order of business was to dig out the outhouse. Nils dug out about four feet of snow blocking the door and then we built stairs down to it. We noshed on some hot dogs and dug in at the cabin.


The next morning we ate breakie and geared up for our day out. I got the 30 second intro to cross-country skiing, which I equate to skating on twigs.








After nearly a km of skiing we spotted a hillside that looked like a good place to start out our day. Nils, Chris, and I grabbed our boards and headed for the top. After a few runs I spotted some sweet looking cornices on the next hillside over. Nils and I went to investigate. A quick assessment of the tree situation and we were climbing up the cornice. Here I am in front of it -- the light is super flat out there making it difficult to distinguish terrain. Unfortunately the top of this section rolled off quite a bit so we didn't get very clean drops off this little guy. Nils had an awesome snow cone experience though.








We packed up our boards and saddled up to our skis again. A quick little trip took us to a sheltered nook where we unpacked for lunch.





After lunch you can probably guess what we did: we grabbed our boards and hucked ourselves off the top of this thing. From top to bottom it was 10-15 feet, but with snow built up at the landing, the drops were more like 7-10 feet. Here's a vid of me pulling a nice little Indy. Unfortunately we didn't get the clean 180 I pulled on my second go around.





With the sun setting we decided to head for home where Sarah fixed us up a feast and I promptly passed out (I blame jet lag).


Sunday morning we planned for a short trip out before we had to head for the car. Today they unleashed some more difficult cross country on me -- this was all uphill (or at least it felt that way).





Luckily it was only a little more than a km before we spotted this awesome looking cornice with a beautiful little wind-blown spine built up right underneath it.





This guy was anywhere from a 7-20 foot drop depending on where you went off and the scariest part was that the light was so flat you couldn't tell where the edge or landing were. At the top I was treated to this awesome view.





And here's the look down at where we setup base camp.





Nils took a modest first drop and then I went for it. I strapped in and headed for the edge. I had planned to drop a bit further down where it looked to be about 10 feet but I couldn't really tell what was what and ended up coming off a lot closer to Nils than I expected. Here's the vid.





From then on I started marking the spots where I wanted to go off. Nils collapsed a section of the cornice when he stepped too close to the edge triggering a small avalanche. I'd been planning to hit the larger drops anyways, but now had no choice really. My 2nd drop set me up perfectly for hitting that wind-blown spine where -- I hit a few 180s and the video is below. The last run for the day was a rush -- a solid 15 feet (maybe more) with an Indy all the way down.





We thought we could ride a good way back to the cabin so we kept the skis on our back and went for it. Unfortunately this ended up being 20 minutes of hiking for roughly 30 seconds of riding.





We got back, ate, packed our stuff, and cleaned the cabin. The snowmobile up was a good move and one back would've been good too, but we figured we could manage. The key here was "pack light." Nevertheless we all had multiple bags on our backs including trash to be taken down. Nils and I opted to board down rather than ski since we figured it'd be easier. We kept our ski poles in our hands and invented the sport of cross-country snowboarding. This was actually a lot of fun as there were only a few uphill sections and they were pretty short. Cross-country skis aren't very good for downhill so we made it back to the car way ahead of everybody else.





At the car we changed and packed up. Sarah came barreling into the parking lot and couldn't stop because the lot was iced over. She went straight into a snow bank face first. I wish I had it on film, it was classic. This is all I managed to get.





We braved the road again and after 4 hours crammed in a sardine can we were back in Oslo. What a weekend!

Being stationary for a couple months saved me from those 20+ hour traveling days that I enjoy so much...but all good things must come to an end. So today I made it to Oslo and tomorrow we head for the hills - Nils' family has a winter cabin near Hol where we'll be spending the weekend with some friends. Can't wait for some backcountry riding and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Arctic Lights (I know, it's the wrong season, but a boy can dream can't he?).