Thursday, March 29
“I’ll drop round, say g’day and give you a lift pass”
Sylvie, an acquaintance of mum’s who I’d put up in Newie while she was travelling in Australia (having come across from NZ where she was studying English), lives round the corner from camp at a typical alpine village. She runs a refuge/hostel in the summer. Well she popped in to say g’day and gave me the pass, which I used two days later.
The runs are so long in this country that I only lasted 7 hours on the slopes and left before the lifts closed…I guess if I’d paid for the ticket I might have stayed, but it got to the point where my muscles and feet were aching and I knew that if I kept going up I’d eventually hurt myself, since the more tired you get the less precise you become.
The snow conditions were great, especially at the top @3600m. I found heaps of fresh powder just off the runs. I was also very happy with my performance, as I hadn’t set foot on a snowboard for about 7 years (and that was only for half a day at mt Selwin…). As Sylvie said: “don’t worry, it’s just like riding a bike…you never forget…”
