Out There: Skiing in Austria

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Outside Magazine December 2004

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Out There
Absolutely Knackered (Cont.)

IT KEPT SNOWING for three days, dropping more than two feet of fresh powder and opening up the entire valley. But two feet of unpacked snow sitting atop grass, rocks, dirt, and small trees proved both blessing and curse for the eager packs of beginner skiers and snowboarders as they waded waist-deep into it.

It was still snowing Tuesday when I caught up with the group of Cambridge night-sledders on the slopes, recounting their rapid advancement from beginner to "über-extreme" boarders. They'd spent their morning riding blindly into streams, embracing trees, and running aground on rocks—and had loved every minute. Back out on the hill, they were ecstatic, their faces transfigured by huge, permanent smiles. Powder smiles.

"I love snowboarding, I love it," panted Leonard Picardo, a.k.a. Lenny, 21, a third-year engineering student then in the middle of his fourth day, ever, of snowboarding. Lenny was decked out in a Jaguar Racing windbreaker—his career ambition is to work as a Formula One engineer—Nike basketball wristbands, a headband emblazoned with the Superman S, and a mismatched pair of gloves: one plain black, the other with the words EVEREST EXTREME strewn across the knuckles in neon green.

"I'm feeling quite bullish today," he said, referring to the damn-the-torpedoes riding style that the group had adopted. They had, collectively, no fear. Their face plants were epic and frequent, but they would get up and go in search of more big air, dumping themselves off ten-foot drops, only to wind up buried in the powder, laughing. Every time Lenny felt himself headed for a wipeout, he could be heard giddily shouting, "Über-extreme!" or "Über-fun!" or "Fantastich!" as he generated another explosion of powder and enthusiasm. "We need to get James a beer," Lenny continued, "to get him more bullish."

James Smith, 20, a tall, quiet computer science student, was standing nearby in enormous white mittens and a canvas parka that absorbed water at every chance and then froze, stiff as a board, giving him the air of a deranged Tin Man. This group, which lived together in Cambridge and was sharing a suite on the trip, also included Chris Dibben, 21, a rugby player new to snowboarding and trying to live down the shame of being tackled in the snow the night before by two women; James Paget, 22, a lacrosse-playing medical student known universally as Chaps, thanks to a predilection for overusing the word; and Gareth Roberts, 20, known as Gaz, a big, hilarious guy with dark hair and a nearly manic smile. Gaz was the only one on skis, and he maintained an antagonistic relationship with turning.

"It looks so much easier on a snowboard," he complained, half covered in snow after taking a fall to avoid a clump of trees. He'd already broken the display on his cell phone with one tumble, and he'd had some bad luck with his skis. After blowing out an edge on the first pair he was issued ("I have no idea how that happened," he said afterwards), he had lost a ski completely in deep powder the following afternoon, at the other end of the valley, and had to walk back.

"But it was such a good day up to that point," he reported, "that it was worth it." He and the others had discovered the joy of snow sports, and with it the joy of rental equipment.

"The good thing about not having your own board," Lenny deduced after a particularly spectacular wipeout, "is that you don't have to worry about messing it up. Breaking stuff is always so much more fun when it's not yours."

They skied until the lifts closed, pushing one another onto terrain far beyond what their skills could handle, and then crawled back to their hotel for a session in the sauna and the pool. We were meant to reconvene later for dinner, but when I showed up at their room, they were all passed out, and the only words I could get out of them were Britspeak synonyms for exhaustion: "knackered"..."shattered"..."gutted."

"No going out on a powder day," Chaps mumbled. "No dinner, either."

Three hours later, I spotted Chaps, James, and Chris at a corner table in the busiest bar in town, holding an impromptu war room, ski map spread out on the sticky, Red Bull–covered table in front of them, all their energy focused on plotting the most efficient route to cover the entire valley the next day.

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