Erstellt am: 14. 4. 2011 - 11:46 Uhr
The Last Adventure of Winter
Eva even made a little Video about the Climb To Ski Camp!
It was day two of the Climb To Ski Camp in St Anton. I was looking down at our planned route from the viewing platform of the Valluga at 2,811m and it was dawning on me what I had got myself into when I signed up for a freeride weekend with two of Austria's top all mountain skiers, Eva Walkner and Björn Heregger .
Hansi Heckmair
14 skiers from Austria, Germany and Switzerland had won their places on the camp by posting photos of themselves freeriding on the facebook page of the sponsor and demonstrating their skills in the rough stuff. "We took those who obviously knew how to handle a pair of skis," Eva told me, "but we tried to take the ones who seemed creative and original and looked like they had a real passion for free riding." I'd tagged along because I had a new pair of fat skis, because I wanted to hang out with Eva and because I was looking for some late season adventure.
But looking over the edge of the Valluga viewing platform, I was wondering if I had bitten off more than I could chew this time. I had been freeriding before, but that was in cold January in perfect powder conditions. Now it was warm, incredibly so even for April and that, paradoxically, was what was giving being me cold feet. The thermometer on the Valluga middle station had shown plus 8 degrees at 9 in the morning and this at nearly 3,000 meters. "You have to know what you are doing," Eva had said before we'd arrived as we were talking about freeriding, "and the limits of your skill.” I had some rapid thinking to do.
The plan was for us to drop off the platform into a 40 degree slope. It had been several days since the last storm, so the snow was well tracked and looked to me like that difficult mix of hard crust and soft sections. There was a cliff below and jagged rocks were poking out menacingly like a monster's jaw. You have to ski down the fall line, then traverse left to skirt around the edge of the cliff ."Falling is forbidden during this section," announced our mountain guide Fussi without a trace of irony. Obeying orders had never sounded so appealing.
Hansi Heckmair
"Wie schaut's aus bei dir?" asked Eva, joining me at the rail and following my gaze towards the jutting rocks that made this top section look like a wolf's mouth. I suggested to Eva that I could just take the gondola back down and meet the group for a drink later to ask them how it was. "Rubbish, you'll have no problems," she said. "Come on, it will be a great experience. You don't want to miss it." She told me it wasn't "extreme", but I reasoned since she jumps off cliffs for her living perhaps I shouldn't trust her definition of that word.
I don't want to be a coward, I grew up on a diet of Greg Stump videos and I dream of wide-open snow fields not crowded pistes. My heart says I want to be a freerider but my head usually disagrees vehemently, especially after a spell in hospital after a mountainbike accident, and the two of them were having a fierce if silent battle as we took a gondala ride up.
Hansi Heckmair
There were six of us crushed in a cabin the size of telephone box and someone had been eating garlic. A natural chatterbox, I had become as quiet as a churchmouse. At the bottom, ominously, we passed a sign saying no skis beyond this point. Tourists without an official ski guide are usually only allowed up on the second lift to look at the view. They introduced this policy after a series of skiers fell to their deaths of the cliff that I'd spotted (I'm glad I only researched that detail later).
We were kitted out against the dangers of avalanches with transmitters, shovels and poles for finding buried victims. The previous afternoon we'd had a refresher course on mountain safety. I'd taken part in an avalanche safety camp the previous year. Thinking about the consequences is vital, but sometimes, perhaps, you can dwell too much on the dangers. I decided to break out of the prison of my own fear and, because it is waiting for the first turn that I find the most nerve-wracking, I jumped in as the first participant straight after Fussi. As John Wayne said "Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway."
Hansi Heckmair
Fussi reminded to keep a safety distance on the first steep section and to not err to far from his line. "You don't have to impress anyone" he'd told us. "Ski safely, it doesn't have to look aesthetic." I took his advice very literally, side-slipping and jump turning with the posture of an orangutan until my heart beat calmed down. I talked myself into the turns, pole out very deliberately, then the sudden swoop and dropping sensation and then fighting with the skis almost perpendicular to the fall line with loosened snow rushing past. It didn't look pretty and I didn't care.
Then our group had passed through the narrow rocky area, it stopped being scary and started being fun. I looked up at the fierce route we had come down, the Valluga and Rogspitze peaks towering above and then looked down the Pazieltal valley towards Zürs. The worst was certainly behind us. Huge sunlit meadows opened in front of us, hard but smooth and no longer steep. We were alone in this vast expanse of nature, no lifts in sight, no other skiers.
Climb to Ski
Now my legs had stopped shaking I could do proper turns instead of hacking my way down and the only noise was the sounds of our own skis scratching the hardened crust. I was overcome by absurd, head-reeling sensations of bliss. It made me think of my grandfather who used to walk up the high mountains with wooden skis tied to his back in the 1930's. What would he have thought of my addiction to prepared pistes and carving skis? Pah! This was the real thing. The real mountain experience. We were now coasting along on a undulating route never far from a mountain stream, flowing strongly now in the spring warmth. The relief swelled my chest. I was so glad that for once my heart had beaten my head.
Hansi Heckmair
The Valluga run was one of the highlights of a weekend that included a lot of hiking to access steep gullies and north-facing meadows where the compacted powder was still good to ski. It's pushing your limits but in the company of mountain professionals. Eva, Björn and our two mountain guides were fastidious about safety precautions.
Hansi Heckmair
Freesking in its true essence is never gung-ho, it's about calculated risks and being able to ski together again tomorrow. None of the participants of this Climb to Ski weekend seemed to me to be adrenaline junkies, just people who love and respect the mountains. Intimacy grows fast on weekends like these. I wouldn't have dropped in off the Valluga if it hadn't been for the friendly encouragement of my fellow skiers who had been strangers 24 hours earlier. In the afternoon, we all came back into the village, flushed red for the sun, but from the inward beams from the skiing too, and with that easy familiarity of having shared something quite unforgettable.
Hansi Heckmair