Big Adventures, Little World

Being up so early and being excited should never go together, but today they did, as we were about to learn how to snowboard. With the excitement though also went some nerves seeing as I had never done anything like it before and was going to slide down a snowy mountain with nothing but what is essentially a plank of wood attached to my feet. Like I was going to let thoughts like that stop me though, I was more than happy to get out there and start boarding!

We made our way down to the ski hire shop where we picked up some our boots and board, or skis for Lucas and then it was onto the gondola and up, and up the mountain. It was an all new experience for us, getting onto the gondola while it’s still moving, then making our way up the mountain on it, and then finally at the top the snow everywhere! It was nothing short of amazing! I had been told by a number of people how I was going to hate snow but I couldn’t see how. It was just so exciting and just looked like fun, fun, fun. We looked every which way we could and everywhere there was mountains and snow. The views were beautiful and I just stood there for a minute looking around and taking it all in.

Posing with my snowboard in the blizzardy conditions

Once we had admired the snow in all its glory, it was back to school for Elese, Kate and I while Lucas went off to reacquaint himself with skiing and explore the area. So we found out where we needed to be for snowboarding school and off we went to meet our instructor Sam. It turned out he normally taught advanced classes and had been boarding for about 15 years, so we were lucky to have him teaching us. Sam then took us up onto the green slope, which is the beginners slope, so that we could learn the basics. He also introduced to Rob, who was learning to be an instructor at 17 years of age and had only been snowboarding for 10 weeks.

We learnt the basics like how to get onto the board and then it wasn’t long before we were sliding, and falling, down the slope. To start with though we just had the one foot attached to the board and learning one-footed turns and getting into a rhythm of things. It took a bit of getting used to but we got there, then we moved up to having both feet attached to the board and doing the same type of turns. After an hour and a half we had finished the first half of the lessons and after a little bit more of practising by ourselves we headed over to the restaurant to have some food and get re-energised for the second half of our lesson in the afternoon.

After burgers for lunch it was back out to the mountain with the snow starting to fall and the wind picking up. My snow gear didn’t disappoint, and if anything, I was too warm! Back on the mountain we got back into our turns, but this time went slightly higher up the mountain. Slowly but surely we started to pick it up slightly, but not without spending a lot of time on our asses or flat on our faces in the snow. The snow wasn’t all that soft either so all the falls were starting to take their toll on our bodies, and this was only the first day! At the end of the lesson we practised a little more, but we were tired and sore so we made our way back to the apartment for a rest before heading out for dinner that night.