Last weekend, IES led a ski trip to a ski area called Radtstat, not too far out of Saltzburg (where The Sound of Music took place). We left Vienna about 1 o'clock on Friday, and got to the mountain at about 6pm that night. After renting all our skis and snowboards, we checked into our hostel that was about a five minute walk to the base of the mountain. Apparently, a five a hour bus ride makes you very tired, so we all went to bed around 11pm. Next morning we woke up to snow falling and a fresh few inches (centimeters?) of snow. After a big breakfast and stuffing our pockets with food from the buffet, we got our two day passes and headed up the gondola. Me and a few friends broke off from the massive IES group that formed at the top of the mountain, and explored the mountain. Usually, I'm one of a few snowboarders
in a group, but all the people I spent the day with were snowboarding too, and only one skier! It was a bit surprising at first, but I liked it. I also found it funny that out of the entire 40 IES people, I was the only girl snowboarder--it kind of made me feel like a badass. But anyways, the snow was pretty good, and it wasn't too crowded, so no lines and no traffic jams on the hill. The mountain we were on had only a few lifts on it, so that evening we decided we would take a bus to another mountain near by that looked much bigger and went up much higher.
Sunday we woke up a cloudless ski, and an ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE VIEW. I was in awe at how beautiful these mountains were. My friends were all surprised by my reaction considering the fact that I live in the Rockies, but these mountains were in a whole different category--I feel like I can't even explain it! So we rode the gondola up to the mountain we had skied the day before, then skied over to the base of another little mountain to catch the bus. Once we got to the other mountain (only about a 10 minute bus ride), we immediately got in the gondola line, to go up to the very top. Now as some of you know, the Europeans don't exactly believe in standing in line, so the whole process of getting into the gondola was a little hectic, but I ended up getting in one of this tiny, definitely still from the 70's, 4-person gondola with two little girls and their ski instructor. The first hill we went up was probably at a 70degree angle, which freaked me out a little bit, but I brushed it off--the view was fantastic and I was enjoying trying to figure out what the little girls were talking about. After about five minutes, we come up over
a ridge, and all of the sudden there's this huge gust of wind that slams my snowboard into the window outside and scares all of us. We all kind of laugh while I'm hoping that it doesn't fall off or something. All the sudden, the gondola jerks to a stop, and the wind is so strong, the car is LITERALLY almost sideways. I then made the mistake and looked down, realizing that we are about 100 feet in the air, with a very steep slope and jagged rocks below us. We are stopped for about 30 seconds, then jerk and start going again. At this point, I'm a little freaked out, but I can see the end of the ride is near, we should be there soon...BUT NO. It stops again, and the car swings and swings and the little girls start crying for their mothers and I ask the ski instructor, who should obviously be experienced with this ride, if this is normal--her eyes are wide as she replies "No, this is not normal at all". Alas, I did not plummet to my death, but for a while there, I thought that I might. (The ski area actually shut down the gondola just after we got off, and it ended up being closed the entire day.) I waited at the top for the rest of my friends, all who were equally as terrified as I was. After taking a break to regain our nerves and take in the most incredible view of mountains I have ever seen, we preceded to have on of the best days of boarding of my life. We spent very little time on actual trails and were exploring the woods with 3 feet of untouched powder almost all day long. There was even one bowl that we dropped into that had a "BEWARE OF AVALANCHE" warning sign that people had been ducking under all day--it was literally the most snow I've ever seen in one place...
We were having such a great time that we didn't even stop to have lunch--just got the best brautwurst I've ever eaten from a little trailer at the end of the day. Needless to say, the bus ride back was full of 40 very sleepy (and some very sunburned) people. I slept the entire way back!
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