After the last days heavy snowing we woke up stoked for skiing under a blue sky and shining sun. We literally flew out of bed and had hardly time for breakfast before we headed out to the gondola to verify if my knee works and hopefully get some marvelous powder. The first part of the gondola was no problem but we were fooled, the second part was closed because of avalanche warning. It doesn’t work like in normal western ski resorts here where they have huge organizations trying to minimize the danger of avalanches. Instead there are a few persons who voluntary work here with it but because of the political situation they are now allowed to have explosives and therefore must ask the military for help every time they want to trigger an avalanche. Everything takes a lot of time here and all you can do is wait.
Meanwhile we took a really bad ride down the first part, somehow we ended up at a flat part so we had to walk a bit but the good part is that we now know that my knee works, both for easy riding and for walking around in deep snow.
Back on the middle station we had some tea, mingled with ski bums and waited and finally we heard some explosions but no avalanches so everybody started to get really stoked, it looks like we get some riding today. However at the same time they started to let people on board the gondola they did a last manual test on critical parts and yes, the snow started to roll down the mountain and it grow bigger and bigger. No one got hurt in the avalanche which was a really big one. We were standing a couple of hundred meters from it and it was really impressive to both hear it, see it and feel it. Its hard to imaging how strong powers there actually are involved.
Of course it was out of the question to open the gondola now but we had a really beautiful day on the mountain at least and we did verify that my knee is holding together, duct tape is the shit.
“I’m starting to get tired of Family Guy”
– Martin after 13 days of only Family Guy”