Radstadt & Zauchensee

This past weekend was incredibly boring...


... just kidding! It was amazing.















I went snowboarding in the Austrian Alps! Being from Georgia, I can count the number of times I have been skiing/snowboarding on one hand. Half of those times would be on blown snow in North Carolina, basically--rocketing down ice, so they probably should not even count. I went snowboarding in West VA last year for spring break and loved it, but it had been a year since then and I was by no means an expert boarder so I was a bit nervous about the Alps.

After arriving I realized my nervousness was entirely logical. The mountains were HUGE.

They have 3 colors in the Alps for the runs. There is blue, which the claim is the beginner/easy slope (its a lie however) -- both of these 2 photos above show the start of blue runs, one starts where the arrow is, you can't really see much of it because it just drops off after the arrow. After blue there is red, the intermediate run, and then there is black, the advanced and most diffuclt runs. The bunny slopes don't get a color, but they do exist and are there only as a deception.

This is the bunny slope, or rather, the bunny hill... I personally felt there should be a route that was between the blue and bunny hill. I would have prefered to ride something like that, at least for a little while.

I started my first day on the bunny hill because one of the IES leaders is a snowboard instructor, and we could take lessons if we wanted. For safety reasons, I thought this would be a good idea and I started with them. I only stayed for about 10 minutes....the lesson was going over the very basics of snowboarding, like how to strap your boots in the board. I can confidently say, I can do this, so I decided to go to the top of the bunny hill and just give it a shot. I made it down, and then did it one more time before 2 of my skier friends (who like me had been once before) went with me to the real hills, and I did my first blue run. I won't lie, at a few points I thought I may cry or die... neither ideal.

I made it down and that was the start of my day! I did reds and blue, I was not nearly as graceful as the Austrians around me, but I made it from point A to point B with usually one fall per run (sometimes more). On the really steep parts, and almost all of the red runs I did what is called the "falling leaf" in snowboarding, you basically are breaking the entire time.... I looked silly, especially next to the 5 and 6 years olds that were jumping and soaring by around me, but I did not get any serious injuries... and I am a pro at falling leafing it on my heelside, if I do say so myself.

The next two days were absolutely amazing... I had so much fun with the people, I got closer with people I already knew and made new friends in the program. I was exhausted, and bruised by the end, but also dying to go back to the Alps.

I think I am offically a Snowbunny.