HIT THE EUROPEAN ROADS, JACK! - Page 1
January 25, 2008 @ 3:09 PM
Even if you lived in the perfect resort – and most of us don’t – you need a classic road trip once in a while. We need new impressions to progress, both as snowboarders and human beings. Imagine if you were the only snowboarder in the world: how good would you be and how much fun would you have?
The answer is, of course, that you’d suck and you’d be as sour as a kraut. You’d be bailing all the time because you’d only have skiers to learn from. Sure, after a few years of practice you may be able to copy their ‘helicopter jumps’, but there wouldn’t be any McTwists or switch indy-grabs in your portfolio. So get out there: hooking up with snowboarders in other areas, listening to new tracks on the car audio system, getting those new impressions.
Here’s a collection of ‘ultimate road trips’ – use them to feed you thoughts, even if you just end up going to the hill on the other side of city the next time you ride. It’s difficult to come up with the equivalent of the classic big surf trips – like ‘All-around-Australia’ or ‘Island-hopping-the-Indo-archipelago’ – but we did our best to summon up 3 of our favourite road trips. And remember: road trips involve cars, not airplanes. Flights are boring exercises of trying to make time pass in a closed space. Cars, on the other hand, are made for driving and for getting exactly where you want, when you want. And keeping a good feel for how far you travel will also make you understand why you travel.
The-French-Italian-Menu-de-Powder:
Pack your longest board and gather your mates somewhere in the surroundings of Geneva. Work your way southward along the multiple private toll-roads towards Chamonix. Do this at night to get the right science fiction-feel as you near the landing strip lights at each toll-gate. Sleep a few hours in the car park in the morning hours by the lifts at Le Brevent. Do some hiking there and you’ll get the runs of the day, something you would be unlikely to do among the huge crowds turning the more popular area of Grand Montes into a mogul field. Don’t expect to hook up with some locals. They are as shy as mountains goats and about as talkative too.
After emptying your last Kronenbourg stubby (a small and cheap bottle of decent beer), resist the temptation to head in to civilized Switzerland and instead drop into the infamous Mont Blanc tunnel and exit it in Italy.
Stop right at the exit for a full day of splendid riding a Courmayeur, a lesser-known resort but often with untouched powder fields within easy hiking distance.
Re-load the car and point it towards any of the 3 lift-connected valleys of Champoluc, Gressoney and Alagna. Alagna is the most eastern one, so the drive will be the longest, but is worth the extra effort if it’s dumping. In the morning, pick up a copy of Polvere Rosa, a core off-piste guide to the area written by a serious local. Unless you are already religious, it may turn into your Bible. If it’s bluebird, use it to understand how to access the steep and wide chutes from the top of Punta Indre. If the weather is just decent, try Val d’Otro, a hidden gem with 1700m of vertical in varied terrain.
The lifts above Alagna pretty much offer heli-boarding without the heli, but there are helicopters to be hired as well. Try flying to the refuge Capanna Margherita if you want to see how far out you can get while staying in central Europe.
And don’t forget to have a Peroni (the oldest Italian beer) to refill your liquids after full day of snowboarding the Italian way.
- Ideal time: End of January, early February.
- Best conditions: Heaps of fresh snow.
- Dangers: Getting robbed while sleeping at truck stops along the highways.
Iron-Curtain-Käse-Cross-Over:
The south of Poland may not be your obvious choice for a road trip, but with close to 1000m of lift-accessed vertical above the ancient city of Zakopane, you may want to try it a least once. It gets dumped on heavily from time to time – and if you happen to be there at one of those times you’ll be a one lucky rider. The competition for fresh tracks is almost non-existent, with the majority of people falling all over the green slopes at the bottom. However, the locals you meet will be amongst the most friendly you’ll find anywhere, really. Buy a Warka Strong for any of the girls you are likely to hook up with.
A short drive away you’ll find Spindleruv Mlyn in the Czech Republic. It has a similar feel to it, but with a higher ratio of bars and discos. These and the fact that the pipe and park are usually well groomed have allowed it to host some TTR events over the last years. There’s a growing population of good riders in the area. Here beer is a most serious affair, so try out a few – most notably Urquell and the original Budweiser – but don’t make any jokes about the American namesake.
