80 cm of fresh must have fallen in the week. We knew it was puking in Innsbruck the day we left but the week before must’ve seen a shed load of snow as well because the mountain was smothered in deep snow from day one.
But when the sun came out after a few days of riding almost waist deep powder, we quickly acknowledged the threat of the beauty that immersed us.
We knew Europe had had a good start to its 08/09 season (unlike North America!) but when you book three or four weeks in advance you never really know what you’re going to get.
But we reckon we bagged ourselves the week of the season – the week that Seasonaires recall fondly and holiday makers hope and pray for.
Snow was falling when we arrived in Mayrhofen – the resort we visited at a similar time last year and knew to offer a massive and varied terrain for expert riders. This snow relentlessly fell, day and night, for the first 72 hours.
So we rode the trees, on top of the Penken and Eggalm - like you should when visibility sucks everywhere else, and made fresh lines down duvets and pillows of almost waist deep pow. The trees were our slalom and we slashed in between them blissfully aware of our tremendous luck!
Day four saw our one and only bluebird day – we were hungry for open powder fields and gagging to float down an epic out-of-bounds area we’d used and abused last year whilst all the crowds bashed the pistes.
But our early morning rise immediately brought signs of the death zone that surrounded us - deceiving us with its elegant facade.
We were up on the alpine by 9am and speeding down the corduroy on our first run, scoping out the area, when our mouths dropped and we screeched to a standstill as we caught sight of the roof and part of a window of a Snow Cat that had been almost completely concealed by a slab slide. We watched as this giant vehicle was dug out of its burial chamber – luckily the only casualty of many avalanches in the night.
All around us whole sides had slipped. So without transceivers we kept our free-riding to lower level areas and for the first time - rather than being half buried as we cruised the pow, we were blessed with what every snowboarder knows to be the best darn feeling in the world and floated weightlessly down the hillside.
We headed up the valley to the Hintertux Glacier for our penultimate day – a sure bet for masses of powder, left well alone and ours for the taking. We hit up a wide open area under one of the chair lifts, over and over again - until belatedly being scared off by the lifty, who informed us of the Avalanche warning level 5 - throughout the whole mountain.
For more information on avalanches visit:
http://www.abc-of-snowboarding.com/avalancheawareness.asp
Tags: Avalanches, Holiday, Skiing, Snowboarding, Tree-riding, trip
