Friday 21 December 2007

Snowboarding in Obergurgl

My sister, Urte, invited me and Kate to go snowboarding with her and her boyfriend, Marvin.
I had a few holidays left that I could not carry over into the new year and how could I refuse anyways. Unfortunately Kate could not join us, because she had to work.

I left London on the 12th for Hamburg. Marvin and Urte picked me up from the airport and we went to mys sister's place to pack and have some dinner.
We left around 10pm for Austria. My sister took the first 3h of driving, I had the awful middle part and Marvin did the last bit.


We got to Obergurgl at around 9ish in the morning. The weather was beautiful, sunshine, no clouds at about -10C. We did not have a place to stay yet, so we decided to first sort that out and went to the tourist information. We found a nice apartment within walking distance of the lifts. It was in the valley with big windows and a pretty view of the mountain.

After unpacking we went straight to the lifts. Marvin and I went off-piste a few times, which turned out to be a big mistake. There was just not enough snow and we ran over a number of rocks. :(
Both Marvin and I had some big scratches on our boards so we decided to give them to the shop and have them fixed.
It was a fun day but extremely exhausting. It just showed once again that I spent too much time in front of a computer-screen and too little time exercising.



The second day was not as nice as the first ... we had a few clouds in the sky. ;)
We picked up our boards from the shop. My board was almost good as new and Marvin's was still rideable but it's edge was quite damaged.
We did (try to avoid) that rocks that day but could not ignore some of the untouched hills where it looked like the snow was deep enough. It was great and we ended up with only some minor scratches not worth mentioning.


After the lifts closed we went shopping, I needed some gloves and I wanted to buy a helmet. Marvin decided to get a new board, because his one was more broken and did not ride very well anymore.
We spent the rest of the evening cooking, eating and playing card games.

The weather got better over the next days and colder ... -15C.
We found a few untouched parts of the hills again and some tiny ramps to practice some jumps.
All in all just fun. Trulli somehow hurt her finger, I did too, and one of the jumps ended in a crash with me hurting my left knee ... I am just not 20 anymore :(


One of the evenings we went to the Aqua Dome in Laengenfeld, a spa with great outdoor pools. It was very relaxing.

On the 17th it was time to go back home again :(
We did some boarding for a good part of the day and then packed up.
Marvin and Urte dropped me off in Munich with a couple hours to spare before my flight back to London was scheduled.
It was a great 5 days of snowboarding!

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