snowboarding on real snow.

hello team. well as you know ive been doing a little bit of snowboarding on the plastic ski slope outside my hotel. well 2 weeks ago i got to put my skills to the test on the real snow- and in one of the most famous skiing destinations in europe. chamonix in the french alps. awesome fun and im still here to tell the stories.

DAY 1: up at 6am to pack. then crammed into a mates toyota celica...which is a sports car. we had 5 people, 50kgs of luggage and 2 snowboards. yeah it was a bit cosy and my neck still hurts, but we got to stansted aiport ok. oh yeah, for those who dont livein the uk, stansted airport is 2 hours away. got to the airport checked in no worries, despite my name being spelt wrong. and we were off to geneva. the airport is on the border between switzerland and france. we hired a car and drove up to chamonix in france. cham is a village in the valley of the frence alps. stopped at a supermarket to stock up on supplies. got to our little chalet at about 6pm. solid day. muked around a bit and thats about it.

DAY 2: Raring to go we were up at 7:30, 2 of the other guys had to hire boards and boots etc. i grabbed some boots (had got the rest of the gear off a mate) and we were off to Le Tour one of the slopes, it had some nice green runs (the easiest) as 2 guys hadnt boarded before we all mucked around on them for a few hours, to get some practice. was stoked to find that its much easier on real snow. loved it. picked it up really well. after lunch. 2 guys stayed on green slopes- me and the other guy caught the gondola up to the blue and red run and went on those all arvo. it was great such an adreneline rush, i loved it. was a great challenge and really enjoyed pushing myself down steeper and faster slopes. fantastic. after the chairlifts stopped running we went down at caught up with the other guys on the greens, found a little mound/jump of a little cliff whihc landed in powder snow. mucked aroundon that ofr a while and went home totally exhausted. slept well.

DAY 3: up at 8, and raring to go. went to les grands montets which had some great red, black and blue runs, as well as a few greenies for the other guys... great visibility nice and sunny all day, was hammering on those slopes all day- discovered prob my fav run of the whole valley, a really steep long red run, and just kept doing it over and over again. so much fun, you meet cool people on the chairlift on the way up, the hammer back down, ipod blaring, flying over the snow, one of the best feelings in the world. so great. went home absolutely worn out. again.

DAY 4: Up at 8, everyones starting to get up a bit slower as the days roll on. we went back to Les Grand Montets. there was heaps of dodgey looking cloud hanging around the top of the mountain. went up anyways and was having a great day. until...it was nearing the end of the day, i was on one of my final runs and i was catching the gondola up to one of the steep red runs (oh yeah, the difficulty of the runs goes, green, blue, red, black, double black) the ride took about 10 mins, and as i was going up the cloud was coming down, you could literally see the cloud moving down the mountain side. i was amazed at how quickly the weather could change. so by the time i got out of the gondola i had about 3 metres visibility. the only was was down (well actually i could have gotten back in the gondola, but wheres the challenge in that) so off i headed. there had been a lot of snow the previous night and as it was the end of the day all the snow had been chopped up by all the other people. so there was heaps of mounds of snow, hard packed sections, soft sections. the problem is its all white, so its quite hard to see the contours of the snow. thats in normal visibilty. i had about 3 metres of it. all i was doing was looking for the guide sticks that flashed past to make sure i was still on the run and not about to head over a cliff. despite the poor vis i was hooking along pretty quick, it was my 3rd day, i was confident and having a blast. then i stacked it. really hard. not really even sure what happened as it was so fast. but i know i went from a soft section with heaps of grip to over an icy section lost the edge of my board, and smashed my hip in the fall. i couldnt move my leg for about 10mins. thought i was in serious trouble- my beanie fell off about 10m up the hill. and my leg hurt so much that i decided that i wasnt going to go back and get it. luckily someone brought it down. after 10mins, i slowly started making my way down the slope. took me about 40 mins to get down, usually takes a few minutes. got to the bottom and hobbled down to the green slope and just rested for a while. the visibility didnt improve so we decided to go on the augille di midi. which is a cable car that gos up to about 4800+ feet. which is high. but as there was cloud everywhere we couldnt see anything. you can really feel the altitude up there, you can feel the air getting thinner the further up you go. really cool experience. anyways my computer time is up. so i have to run. ill finish this off soon. oh yeah, 2 weeks on and my hip is still bruised, its getting better- take it easy. andy