Out There: Skiing in Austria

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Outside Magazine December 2004

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Out There
Absolutely Knackered (Cont.)

THE FIRST NIGHT after the snow started, Gilbert had made a bold prediction: "If the sun comes out," he'd said, "that snow is going to be sexual. Very erotic."

Wednesday dawned with pristinely blue skies, and with fresh tracks to be had, the Varsity races became little more than a footnote—only half of the 80 skiers who'd signed up for the

After the snow began, Gilbert made a bold prediction: "If the sun comes out, that snow is going to be sexual. Very erotic."

trials showed. With all the snow-inspired goodwill, the anticipated rivalry never materialized beyond a few good-natured barbs, and the snowboarding squads went so far as to cancel their races in favor of a unified freeriding session.

"We English like to work ourselves up into a big fuss about nothing every now and then," one Oxford skier confided to me, "but it's not like it's a boat race. That's important, but this is just a piss-up ski holiday." (Oxford won the bulk of the races, incidentally.)

When I caught up with Gilbert and Hannah on Thursday to see if their sunlit tryst with the white stuff had been as good as anticipated, their enormous grins said yes.

"I feel like a little five-year-old on Christmas Day," Hannah said, in between complaints about how "buggered" her legs were. "I can't stop smiling."

They had groggily contemplated the snooze button before looking outside and seeing blue skies and powder. They were on the hill by 9 a.m. and got fresh tracks until the lifts closed. Reflecting on how much ground they'd covered the day before, Gilbert now felt free to indulge momentarily in other pursuits.

"Oh, and look at that," he said, elbowing me and nodding toward a woman wearing tight ski pants. "If we ski close to her and impress her, maybe she'll want to sleep with one of us."

He followed her turn for turn the whole way down, mesmerized. By the time I caught up with him in the lift line, he'd decided that, with fresh tracks still to be had, there was no time to waste following women and had moved the conversation on to another of his favorite topics: the strangeness of Austrian culture.

"And who invented lederhosen?" he asked on the lift. "Who says, 'I'd like a pair of leather dungarees and I'd like them short'? It's ridiculous." Then he burst into song.

"Someday I'll fly awaaaaay..." He and Hannah had adopted a slightly off-key rendition of this ballad from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack as their official theme song for the trip. Unfortunately, neither of them knew any words beyond those four, so Gilbert kept repeating them, over and over, in various keys and rhythms.

"Those aren't the bloody words," Hannah laughed.

Toward the end of the day, we bumped into Chaps. He'd just gotten a phone call from James, who had gone off-piste with Lenny and Chris that afternoon, following Lenny despite the fact that he'd found his way into two streams that morning. They'd eventually made their way out of the forest but had ended up in "some random town" and were looking for a taxi back to Hinterglemm.

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