Feeling Small
Standing on top of a mountain about a mile from the largest peak in Europe sure does make one feel small. As you look off into the distance all you see is mountain after mountain, such an expansive range that you feel tiny to the point that it humbles you. Before I explain the feeling of snowboarding in the alps with my roommates, I would love to explain some of the wild yet lucky events that got us there.
Let’s start at the airport; after waking up around 4:00 am Mikey, Trey, Schluter and I catch a taxi to the airport. We arrive a good hour and a half early, it is our first flight since arriving in Barcelona and want to make sure we have extra time to get through security. It took us about five minutes to get from the taxi to our gate, we definitely got there a bit too early. Even though it is around 5:00 am we were a bit too restless to sleep. After arriving in Geneva, Switzerland we spent the day walking around and exploring the city; but that’s a story for a different blog.
Once again, we had to wake up at the crack of dawn, at 5:30 am to catch a bus to Chamonix, France. We sleep through a few alarms, not leaving the Air Bnb until just before 6:00. We try to call an Uber but realize that there are no Ubers in this area. We run a few blocks to the metro station, luckily only having to wait a few minutes. Unfortunately, as we are slowly going stop to stop, we realize that we won’t make it in time if we stay on it. We preorder an Uber once we are inside the city to pick us up at the next stop. We get out, the Uber is only a few minutes away so we breathe a little, knowing we should be fine. Mikey gets an alert; the Uber had cancelled. We now start to panic a little bit more, quickly ordering a new one. After what felt like 20 minutes an Uber arrives, the time is around 6:40 and it says we have a 24-minute drive to the train station. We are stressing out a bit and explain our situation to our driver, pleading for him to step on it. He does just that, speeding through the streets of Geneva, weaving through cars trying to get us there in time. Unluckily, we seem to hit every single red light in the entire city, all of us staring at each light with abated breath. We finally turn the corner of the bus station and hop out immediately, we hustle up to the bus and the driver goes, “you guys are lucky, I was about to leave any second.” We can finally exhale as we shut our eyes for an hour bus ride into the mountains.
As we hop off the bus in the little ski-town of Chamonix, the mountains look like they are on top of you. I have never been this close to such tall and impressive looking mountains. Standing in the town the surrounding mountains look more like a wall than a slant. We get some food and grab our gear, hopping on a short shuttle to the base of one of the mountains. We hop off and my nerves and excitement are mounting. I haven’t snowboarded in a few years and I was a bit apprehensive of sending it in the alps with Trey and Mikey. The excitement takes over as we hop on the first gondola, looking out the windows in awe as we slowly get higher and higher. This specific lift only takes you about 2/3 of the way up. We go down a short hill to get on the gondola that takes you to the top. Inside the gondola is an older English couple, Mikey, Trey and me. We start talking about the resort and skiing here and the older couple keep telling us about how dangerous it is. Going on and on about the random rocks that you can’t see, on top of all ones you can. We get off at the top and decide to check out this famous vantage point a few hundred feet away. Trey decides not to strap in and just ride on top of his board. Now, to get to the viewpoint you go across the top of a black diamond. This is important to note because as Trey starts to head over, he slips a bit and his board goes out from under his feet. He freezes. He looks at me as his board starts to go down the mountain, I scream “Go! Go-go-go-go!” He takes off sprinting down this black diamond. Unfortunately, his board got the head start and is showing no signs of slowing down. Given how steep the slope is he half dives/half trips after a hundred feet or so. I look to my right, Mikey and about twenty other people are just staring at this man, sliding headfirst chasing his board down the tallest mountain in the resort. We all watch, kind of in a state of shock, as his board launches off a cliff, getting surprising hangtime. I look over at Mikey and we absolutely lose it, we burst out laughing, not quite sure what just happened or how to react. After we settle down, we strap up and head down to Trey who also had the same reaction as we did. He is laughing his ass off as he points to his board, a few hundred feet away where it stopped feet from going off another cliff. We were convinced we would never have found it had it not stopped.
We spend the next six or so hours going up and down these magnificent mountains. Only taking breaks to try and grasp the expanse of these jagged shapes. A picture cannot capture the distance between each of these peaks. Once we had about an hour before they closed, we realized we had one or two runs left. We decided to head to some back-country to get some trees and powder involved. We head down through some beautiful land, stopping when we find a pretty solid natural jump. We try our luck, me needing more than luck to land. We continue a bit more and I decide to try and hit these three mini jumps in a row. I land the first two and then completely eat it, getting snow up my back and all over my neck. My only response was to yell out of euphoria, “LETS GO!” Sometimes a solid yell is all you can do when you’re this happy. We continue and find a path leading further from the mountain. We ride this little trail until it starts to go back up hill. At this point we realize we either walk all the way back through deep snow or just go down through the foliage. As we start the descent the trees and brush get denser as the snow gets deeper. We move slowly as a group as we work our way down. After about 30 minutes of navigating our way through, we come to an avalanche route that had cleared away a lot of the trees. We boardslide down, and down, and down. My quads are burnings and toes jammed into my boots. It has been a long day and were all anxiously waiting to get to the bottom. Finally, we get close and take off our boards to walk out of the trees. We walk out into the clearing and I collapse, giving my legs a rest. We keep getting weird looks from the cross-country skiers, turns out we are nowhere near the chalet. We drag our boards and tired bodies through a random neighborhood until we come across the main street and wave down a passing shuttle. What a day, easily one of the best of my life.
