Snowboarding the Alps

Last weekend I snowboarded the Alps!!! Me, Anne and Kara went to Innsbruck Friday evening and walked around the Christkindlmarkt and spent the night in a hostel. The next morning we woke up and caught a bus that took us to Stubai Glacier. It was about an hour out of town. The bus ride was cool, because everyone was going to the mountain and they had all their equipment on the bus. When we made it to the resort we then took a Gondola to the main section. Once at the main section we rented our equipment. I had a Burton Lux 147. It was a fantastic rental and I put more scratches on the bottom of it than it had when I first got it. Kara and Anned skied, but the three of us were all at about the same level, so it made the day easy. When you are getting on the lift, though, it was a little more difficult. The main lifts were 4 and 6 seaters and there is no queue. There is a mass of people and you just shove your way to the front and once you get there, then you divide into 6's. The snow was more ice and rocks, than snow, but the fact that I was on the Alps made that irrelevant. I only had a few falls and walked away with the usual black and blue knees and rear end. The craziest part of the day was the t-bar lift. I rode with Anne and I pretty much just hugged her the entire way up. They wouldn't let me strap all the way in while riding it up, so I had to go up the hill being dragged by a pole with only one foot in bindings and the other on my stomp pad. If you are a skier the pole sits on your hind quarters/thighs and it pulls you up in a sitting position. If you are a skier that pole that the skiers sit on, you straddle. It was an experience and me and Anne laughed so hard we were crying by the time we made it to the top!!! Not something I want to do every time I snowboard, but I got the hang of it. A little bit of a side note. Instead of having lift tickets that you get scanned they have plastic key cards and when you walk past the gate it picks up the card and you can just walk through, so you leave it in your jacket pocket for the day and you are good to go. It was really cool. If you wanted to go another day you could just recharge your card instead of buying a whole new lift ticket.

On the way home we rode the bus back down and ended up meeting two other Americans studying in Salzburg and a guy from Notre Dame studying in Innsbruck. It was such a random meeting and it made the bus ride home great and not nearly as long.

When we made it back to Innsbruck we caught the train home and were back in Salzburg in 2 hrs. So we arrive in Innsbruck after it was dark, left the city to ski while it was dark and returned from skiing when it was getting dark, but the city is still beautiful at night especially with Christmas lights. In the morning we did get a glimpse of the Olympic stuff as the sun was just peaking over the mountains.