Overall, it feels like we're becoming much more productive at work. The product is coming along now that our developers are here. We're going to be doing a big push to get ready for a tradeshow in March.
Working early and late allowed me to take a day off on Friday. The kids and I drove down Thursday night 5 1/2 hours to Andermatt, Switzerland. We stayed in a little hostel that was literally on the resort. We had to hike up about 150 meters up the ski run to get to Basecamp Andermatt.
http://www.basecamp-andermatt.com/en/andermatt/andermatt-freeriding-switzerland
The drive there was uneventful except the GPS tool I had downloaded onto my iPhone had us go the truck route at the Swiss border. The kids were all excited to get their passports stamped. Instead we had to talk to a guy about 10 feet above us because it was only for Semis. He asked us if we were carrying anything, we shrugged our shoulders and acted like dumb americans. He waved us through! The kids wondered why Jason Bourne didn't just go through the truck side of the border!
We entered Switzerland right by the Rhine and briefly entered into Germany. It rained pretty much the entire way and it was very dark. The coolest part were the tunnels. Switzerland is a land of tunnels. Tons of them! We went through a 10k long tunnel. It took forever! As we got closer we saw some big lakes and started winding our way up a canyon.
We hit the Andermatt turnoff and things changed dramatically. It went from rain to snow within just a couple minutes. We started going through tunnels that protected the road from avalanches and the road was literally built out from the side of the mountain. I guess Andermatt didn't really become easily accessible until the 1980s. It was a very steep canyon, with narrow, turny roads.
The town of Andermatt is very small and quaint. When we arrived there were a ton of drunk, dressed up people celebrating Carnival. There were also a lot of Swiss military there as there is a small base in Andermatt.
We arrived about 10:30 and called our good friend Bob MacFarlane. He helped us take our stuff up to the Basecamp. It was really, really good to see him and talk about Luxembourg and home. His son Brody is a senior this year and has been a regular with us snowboarding at the stash. It is hard to believe he is that old and will be going on a mission this fall. Spencer will be leaving us before we know it!
After a good night of sleep we got up and rented our boards at Snowlimits. The owner was a super nice guy that spoke great English and had been mountain biking in Moab. He had even biked the White Rim! Renting the gear was very expensive, but we figured we're only over here once. I could have purchased a brand new board for what we paid for 4 boards for 2 days.
The ski resort basically surrounds the town, so we walked over the lifts, purchased our passes and rode the tram up to the top. There are two trams, one stops 1/2 way the second takes you to the top. We took everyone right to the top. It was beautiful! The kids could not believe that we were actually snowboarding in the Alps.
The snow was decent, but not epic on the groomers. It had snowed about 6". Bob led Spencer and I to a great run that we had to hike to. It was a pretty gnarly decent into a couilor that was absolutly incredible. We had some great dry powder runs down into the basin where we'd meet up with the kids. The avy danger wasn't too big. We set off some small sluffs, but nothing huge. At one point, Bob and I were taking a rest when we were overcome with a powder wind from above. We both looked at each other like, "what the.." but it ended up just being wind.
We boarded until the end of the day and then cooked some french bread pizzas at Basecamp. It is always difficult to figure out how to use the stoves/ovens over here, but we got some help from a nice Swedish guy who had been there 9 weeks with his family. A 9 week vacation in Andermatt would be totally awesome!
We were totally beat after a long day of riding. We took showers and headed to bed. The Swede told us that over the next couple days they'd get 50 cm. But none of the forecasts said that so we sort of discounted him.
The next morning we woke up to lots of snow! We packed up and stashed all of the gear in the car. We headed up the mountain and the report was 30 cm at mid-mountain. We got to mid mountain and they said the upper tram would be closed until 10. So we started hitting the powder. If you didn't go down steep faces it was too much and you'd slow way down. So we started looking for all of the steeper runs from mid-mountain. We found some great open, because powder fields and we carved them up!
All of the kids did great in the powder and preferred it much more than the harder groomer day. Emilee even got to the point where we was practicing her S-turns vs. her standard falling leaf approach.
We were bummed out at 10:00 when the tram didn't open up. They closed it for the whole day due to severe avalanche conditions up top. But we found other runs on the left side of the mountain that were harder to get to because you had to ride a rope tow up. It was hilarious watching us try to get up the rope tow. At one point Spencer fell and just held on to the top. We all had multiple crashes.
But, we were rewarded with totally uncut fields of powder. The only problem was the flat light, which made it hard to tell the difference between a field of powder and a cliff. We had a close call at one point where we were all stopped talking about how great it was and then Bob said I'll go first. He immediately dropped off a 10 foot cliff that none of us could see.
The avy danger was definitely higher on those slopes so we were careful, but had a really, really good time carving up untouched powder. It was a longer run than the stash and totally open, above the tree line. It made the whole trip really memorable and worth the cost!
We dropped Bob off in Zurich. We really appreciated seeing and boarding with him. He's an awesome, awesome friend that we all love!
The drive home was uneventful. We learned some French from the Pimsleur CDs and got home at 10:30 pm.
Ash proceeded to puke and have diarrhea the entire night, so we missed church today and slept the entire day. It was nice to take a break and just be with the family.
Here are the pics from this week!
No comments:
Post a Comment