So all of December I was in Levi as usual. It's always nice to see the people there since you barely see anyone during the summer. Weather was like it usually is around that time, some days you might have -1 and then a few days late the temperature drops to -25. A few days after I left Levi they got -34 I think, soo thankful I wasn't there working when it happened.
Most of the time I was just working. I did get to ride some park but mainly after a long day of working when it's too dark to film anything and on my days off the weather ended up being quite terrible. Only thing I ended up filming was some faceshots in the small amount of pow I could find on the side of the slope. It turned out so bad that I actually just deleted it. The base was way to weak to go ride in the trees.
So christmas and newyears passed by pretty quickly and on the 5th of Jan I left Levi, went to Helsinki, repacked, and headed towards Austria.
So I've been in Austria now for 2 weeks and it's been epic. The snow base is not that good but the last 4 days we've been getting so much snow that it's hard to stay away from the off-piste. This results in ruining the base of your boards real nicely. The service for my board ended up costing 40€ which was abit of a shock but they did a really nice job. If anyone is interested in where I took my board it was Moreboards in Mayrhofen.
We bought the Tirol Snow Card which is like a combo ski pass that is valid in something around 90 different resorts. During this first week we've been to 4 different ones. Around 7 I guess if you count the ones that are connected to eachother as different resorts.
The first weekend we tried going out. This ended up with us eventually just drinking at home since the taxi never picked us up. We called it like 3 times and the same driver confirmed that he would be on his way. I feel like he might have been one of those drivers who pick you up at the point when he happens go drop off another costumer close by.
So last night we were successful because of better planning. We took the train to town. Only "problem" is that the last train leaves at 20:20 or something so you end up starting the evening quite early. So today was kinda just about regaining my strength, which is an idiotic way to spend your day away from the slopes. But, it had to be done.
This week we actually got a super fun day in Hintertux. The weather was abit terrible but it had it's upsides. The few who were there mainly spent the day on the slopes further down where it was less windy and better visibility. This left us with some super easy-access powder areas. I think we spent like 3/4 of the day riding this area between two slopes that for some reason had really good snow. I filmed abit even if the visibility wasn't too good but it turned out ok. Was planning on putting a clip together tomorrow night. Our internet connection is the most unreliable you can get so let's just hope I can get it uploaded.
Hintertux in general to me seems like a place that has good riding as long as they have alot of snow and it's a bluebird day. The clouds seem to almost stick to the mountain and since it's a really high mountain the top part has been really windy. The wind combined with the snow and clouds played tricks on us real bad, there was no way of knowing what is up and what is down or if it was ice or powder in front of you. It was super funny going on the t-bar to the top. The lift trail was covered in 20cm of fresh, coming half way up i suddenly hit a wall of snow. With the back foot unstrapped i didn't get very far at the point where I was waist deep in snow. I think all of us fell off the lift at that point. You really don't expect that much snow on the lift trail.
Even if this isn't that far away from home there are so many things that make you feel like you're somewhere super far away. First of all I would say that it's about as easy to get your point trough to someone in Thailand as it is here. Surprisingly often you end up in a situation where you end up getting service in german even if you tell them you only speak english, no matter how polite you are.
There seem to be alot of stores that don't accept Visa which to me is weird. Yesterday I was in a grocery store that would only accept AMEX and Maestro. No Visa, no MasterCard. So basically you get used to always having to carry abit of cash with you. Up on the slopes they only take cash in the restaurants and bars.
On the slopes people have no respect what so ever when it comes to standing in line. everyone cut in line, alot of people even cut in line even when there is no free space anywhere. Too many seem to have no idea what so ever how to pick a spot where you wait for your friends. You get people going trough the ticket gate at the lift and then just stop in the small area in between the ticket gate and the lif to wait for the rest of the group. You get large groups who block all of the gates while waiting for the seasons to change. After 2 weeks I'm still completely amazed by this chaos around the lifts. One day I girl in her 20s started complaining to me because I wouldn't let her cut in front of me in the lift line. She most def got the babe of the day price for that one.
Oh yeah, they use 2&1 cent coins here so you end up having alot of those small annoying barbie coins that are worth more in the material they are made of than the actual value of the coin.
There alot of stuff to write about but I will leave something for later. I need to put up some pictures and edit some pow riding to make this blog abit more interesting. Hoping to get it done tomorrow.
While writing this the damn internet shut down again so might be that I'll get this posted tomorrow morning if someone wonders how some of the stuff I've writted don't add up.
Goooooooooood Night!
