Out There: Skiing in Austria

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Outside Magazine December 2004

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Out There
Absolutely Knackered (Cont.)

THESE MAD DOGS and Englishmen, all 770 of them, had descended on the town of Hinterglemm in mid-December for the 81st Oxford-Cambridge Varsity Ski Trip, a two-week homage to youth centered on the longest-running team ski races in the world. Held annually since 1912, except for hiatuses during the world wars, the trip was conceived by the universities' skiing clubs so that Oxford and Cambridge men could compete in slalom and giant-slalom events, but has since grown to include women's teams, as well as snowboard races, a "big air" competition, and a preponderance of international students ascending the podiums. (With few mountains and even less snow, England has never been known as a skiing powerhouse.) The most important change is the hundreds of nonracers who now tag along to blow off some end-of-term steam, creating a distinctly festive atmosphere. Students of England's most venerable universities like to have as much fun as their Cancún-bound American counterparts, and this yearly snow pilgrimage has become a spring-break-on-skis rite of passage.

Though the races remain the trip's ostensible raison d'être—and an important battleground

The thought broke like a wave over all of them at once: Snow is not green. These hills are green. Green means no snow. Bloody hell.

for bragging rights in the schools' ancient rivalry—the balance in recent years has tipped toward an elaborate schedule of social bloodletting: There's a snow carnival, sled races, a "Bling-Bling Party," a beach party, an endless stream of flügerl (a potent mix of Red Bull and Austrian cherry vodka), and infinite attempts to "pull" or "snog" (a.k.a. make out with) students from the opposing university. And some inventive thrill seeking is to be expected, given a pedigree that includes night ascents of buildings by members of the Cambridge Mountaineering Club and slalom races run on a ski-mounted baby carriage by Oxford's Dangerous Sports Club, which also pioneered bungee jumping in 1979.

Hinterglemm and its sister village, Saalbach—combined population 2,959—sit in a valley in central Austria's Kitzbühler Alps, near the edge of the Tyrol. The trip's organizers usually pick a different resort each year—residents of Tignes, France, are being overrun with British students as you read this—and Hinterglemm's combination of ample intermediate terrain and blissful isolation allowed the students to have their fun without disturbing too many civilians.

When the Brits arrived, most having endured 24 hours of the butt-numbing torture known as crossing Western Europe by bus, they were greeted by the trip's two authority figures: Tim Holmes, 28, an affable former financial trader who was the field coordinator for Skiworld, the trip's London-based outfitter; and Cambridge's George Herd, 22, the lanky president of the student-run Varsity Trip Committee, whose peroxide-striped hair lent him an air of perpetual motion. Tim, George, and their assistants doled out maps and plastic bracelets with emergency phone numbers on them and directed the students to their hotels.

Still dazed from the bus ride, the students found themselves in a peaceful Austrian valley framed on every side by steep, grassy hills straight out of The Sound of Music, a few grazing sheep providing the only whiteness on a pristinely green backdrop. The thought broke like a wave over all of them at once: Snow is not green. These hills are green. Green means no snow. Bloody hell.

And so it was. Hardly a flake to be found.

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