09/02: Verbier - The 4 valleys,,,of which i saw one, but many chutes were had.
So after Chamonix, i travelled back to Lausanne to hook up and ride with Marilyn, who is really a lot of fun to ride with, she is adventurous in spirit and equally as competent in skill. We are good for each other, keeping one another in check and always looking out for the safety of the other.
Verbier is huge. It is known as the 4 Valleys, cause the station covers many peaks and 4 large valleys, of which we saw one, but that's because the terrain we found was so sick that we couldn't tear ourselves away to investigate the rest of the mountain.
From the train station at the bottom of the main valley you take a gondola to the town of Verbier...i had all my stuff with me and barely fit into the gondola with Marilyn, we were just crammed in there, so funny. We tried to get a locker, but they were all taken so we were forced to find our accomodations in order to get rid of our stuff for the day so we could ride, so off the the Bunker we went.
The Bunker is actually a Bunker...it's not just the catchy and claustrophobic name it implies. It is an old WWII nuclear bomb shelter, solid concrete accessed through multiple large vault-like doors. For 39 Swiss Francs we got a bunk and breakfast, good enough for us, we are here to ride. The bunks are stacked not 2, but 3 high and there are 3 rooms with a 40 person capacity each...at full capacity of amped board riders the place would be looney, fortunately we only had 6 people to share with the first night and around 10 the second night. Breakfast was good, instant coffee, corn smacks and milk, bread, cheese and ham (perfect for sandwich making for pocket lunch on the chairlift) and jelly. Pretty tastey.
So we stashed our bags and got back on the bus bound for the gondola. We hit the mountain around 11, a little late, but we are determined to find some goods, we like to hike and we will find pow and the light was just greatm blue bird with few clouds. At hte top of the gondola we take the funitel to the "top", or atleast as high as we would get in 3 days, eyeing up sick lines all the way up. I would use the digital camera to shoot a pic of the face so we could tell where we were once on the top and then choose our line down a bit more confidently. We did a warm up run down a main chute and quicklly found that there was not enough snow to fill in the bumps and tracks from the previous days and what was there was mostly scraped away, so we did a small traverse at the bottom of the chute and quickly rolled over into north facing pow pow, good soft turns. Above which were some incredibly sick lines that looked untouched.
Back to the top, which involved taking 2 person lift, to a 2 person liftm and finally to the funitel; we found that we could do a run full circle in about an hour, so we had 4 more runs left and had to choose wisely...which we did. We hiked the top of the untouched portion above the goods we had found at the lower section on the previous run and found multiple chutes of untouched freshness and weighing in at around 5m wide and 300m long with about a 40 degree pitch. Perfect. We carefully examined the snow quality and found it to our liking. Sharing these chutes for the rest of day, we had exceptional turns and big smiles all day.
That night we set out for dinner and quicly found hordes of costumed partiers celebrating Mardi Gras. Marilyn was so dissappointed that we had not known and thus had no costumes...she quickly devised a story that we were clowns on vacation, dressed up as average everyday 21st century people. This story was accepted by a few of the Mardi-partiers, but mostly got us wide eyed looks of disdain...nonetheless the ridicule was not bad enough to leave the bar, so we stayed until the end dancing, drinking and laughing at all the costumes, the most remarkable of which was a Borat style outfit where 2 guys came in wearing only wrestling liatards and NOTHING else...mind you it was quite cold out. Then they were so bold as to get up and dance on the tables...people didn't know whether to laugh or be repulsed. At midnight we retired back to the bunker with starry skies and hopes for more blue bird the next day.
We awoke to grey skies, hoping it was just a fog, we hit up the continental breakfast, packed some sandos and headed for the slopes...but it wasn't fog, it was clouds and it was thick to the top. But it was moving in and out, which made for windows of visibility which you had about 15 minutes to see approaching and take advantage of. So we timed our runs as best we could or we just waited patiently for the clouds to move through. This day we explored several of the chutes directly below the funitel, as there had been a lot of blown in snow overnight and there were not many locals getting up on this day, the chutes that were skied out the previous day were good for us all day. Towards the end of the day, around 3, the clouds parted revealling some sunshine and good light, so we did 2 runs to the top of our previous day's peak, dropping 2 sick chutes that we had not done the day before so they were just exceptional. We ended the day again at the mid mountain chalet admiring the sunset in one direction and our sick lines in the other...bliss.
We decided to stay another night since the next day was predicted to be blue bird and the bunker was not so bad afterall. We went for dinner at a small sandwich shop and retired early, determined to be on it the next day. And so we awoke to perfectly blue skies and another amazing day. Same routine, breakfast and lunch sandos packed we headed for the mountain. On the way to the bus i realized that the nose of my snowboard had a buckle in it...i had broken it the day before and not realized it...only 18 days of riding on this board and it's broken...the only board i brought to Europe, bummer.
We set out to find the Burton Demo shop, which we did after some questions and walking in the wrong direction, uphill, but before Marilyn's spirits got too low waiting around for me when there was good pow on the hill, we found the shop and got the good news that board demos are free and maybe if i like the Supermodel 63 that they are giving me then we can work out a "deal". I say deal cause these boards are priced at around 1000 swiss francs...about 900 bucks, twice what i have EVER paid for a snowboard before in my life. But a man in need is a compromised indeed, and the board was sick, so with 20% off i was out the door on a pretty new board for around $660...ouch.
Day 3 turned out to be just insane. We did some sick hikes to what became on this day, "our" peak, as no one else was hiking it at all today. We had a his and her chute, where mine had an air out at the bottom which required a 3m drop to exit, so Marilyn stuck to the next chute over for 2 runs, it was so cool looking back up the mountain and seeing my own lines closing my own tracks in one of the sickest chutes i have ever done, with Marilyn's tracks looking much the same just one chute over.
At 2 we decided that we had made it this far on only this section of the mountain, why bother going to the top as we had imagined we would do earlier that morning. So we stuck to what we knew, killing these chutes and smiling all the way down.
We took some sick shots of the terrain we did, check out pics on the images page under the Verbier album.
That evening we headed back to Lausanne to regroup and pick up Marilyn's new car. After living in Switzerland 3 years, Marilyn had finally gotten herself a car, no more relying on the trains, and she was very excited to say the least.
Where to next...?
Verbier is huge. It is known as the 4 Valleys, cause the station covers many peaks and 4 large valleys, of which we saw one, but that's because the terrain we found was so sick that we couldn't tear ourselves away to investigate the rest of the mountain.
From the train station at the bottom of the main valley you take a gondola to the town of Verbier...i had all my stuff with me and barely fit into the gondola with Marilyn, we were just crammed in there, so funny. We tried to get a locker, but they were all taken so we were forced to find our accomodations in order to get rid of our stuff for the day so we could ride, so off the the Bunker we went.
The Bunker is actually a Bunker...it's not just the catchy and claustrophobic name it implies. It is an old WWII nuclear bomb shelter, solid concrete accessed through multiple large vault-like doors. For 39 Swiss Francs we got a bunk and breakfast, good enough for us, we are here to ride. The bunks are stacked not 2, but 3 high and there are 3 rooms with a 40 person capacity each...at full capacity of amped board riders the place would be looney, fortunately we only had 6 people to share with the first night and around 10 the second night. Breakfast was good, instant coffee, corn smacks and milk, bread, cheese and ham (perfect for sandwich making for pocket lunch on the chairlift) and jelly. Pretty tastey.
So we stashed our bags and got back on the bus bound for the gondola. We hit the mountain around 11, a little late, but we are determined to find some goods, we like to hike and we will find pow and the light was just greatm blue bird with few clouds. At hte top of the gondola we take the funitel to the "top", or atleast as high as we would get in 3 days, eyeing up sick lines all the way up. I would use the digital camera to shoot a pic of the face so we could tell where we were once on the top and then choose our line down a bit more confidently. We did a warm up run down a main chute and quicklly found that there was not enough snow to fill in the bumps and tracks from the previous days and what was there was mostly scraped away, so we did a small traverse at the bottom of the chute and quickly rolled over into north facing pow pow, good soft turns. Above which were some incredibly sick lines that looked untouched.
Back to the top, which involved taking 2 person lift, to a 2 person liftm and finally to the funitel; we found that we could do a run full circle in about an hour, so we had 4 more runs left and had to choose wisely...which we did. We hiked the top of the untouched portion above the goods we had found at the lower section on the previous run and found multiple chutes of untouched freshness and weighing in at around 5m wide and 300m long with about a 40 degree pitch. Perfect. We carefully examined the snow quality and found it to our liking. Sharing these chutes for the rest of day, we had exceptional turns and big smiles all day.
That night we set out for dinner and quicly found hordes of costumed partiers celebrating Mardi Gras. Marilyn was so dissappointed that we had not known and thus had no costumes...she quickly devised a story that we were clowns on vacation, dressed up as average everyday 21st century people. This story was accepted by a few of the Mardi-partiers, but mostly got us wide eyed looks of disdain...nonetheless the ridicule was not bad enough to leave the bar, so we stayed until the end dancing, drinking and laughing at all the costumes, the most remarkable of which was a Borat style outfit where 2 guys came in wearing only wrestling liatards and NOTHING else...mind you it was quite cold out. Then they were so bold as to get up and dance on the tables...people didn't know whether to laugh or be repulsed. At midnight we retired back to the bunker with starry skies and hopes for more blue bird the next day.
We awoke to grey skies, hoping it was just a fog, we hit up the continental breakfast, packed some sandos and headed for the slopes...but it wasn't fog, it was clouds and it was thick to the top. But it was moving in and out, which made for windows of visibility which you had about 15 minutes to see approaching and take advantage of. So we timed our runs as best we could or we just waited patiently for the clouds to move through. This day we explored several of the chutes directly below the funitel, as there had been a lot of blown in snow overnight and there were not many locals getting up on this day, the chutes that were skied out the previous day were good for us all day. Towards the end of the day, around 3, the clouds parted revealling some sunshine and good light, so we did 2 runs to the top of our previous day's peak, dropping 2 sick chutes that we had not done the day before so they were just exceptional. We ended the day again at the mid mountain chalet admiring the sunset in one direction and our sick lines in the other...bliss.
We decided to stay another night since the next day was predicted to be blue bird and the bunker was not so bad afterall. We went for dinner at a small sandwich shop and retired early, determined to be on it the next day. And so we awoke to perfectly blue skies and another amazing day. Same routine, breakfast and lunch sandos packed we headed for the mountain. On the way to the bus i realized that the nose of my snowboard had a buckle in it...i had broken it the day before and not realized it...only 18 days of riding on this board and it's broken...the only board i brought to Europe, bummer.
We set out to find the Burton Demo shop, which we did after some questions and walking in the wrong direction, uphill, but before Marilyn's spirits got too low waiting around for me when there was good pow on the hill, we found the shop and got the good news that board demos are free and maybe if i like the Supermodel 63 that they are giving me then we can work out a "deal". I say deal cause these boards are priced at around 1000 swiss francs...about 900 bucks, twice what i have EVER paid for a snowboard before in my life. But a man in need is a compromised indeed, and the board was sick, so with 20% off i was out the door on a pretty new board for around $660...ouch.
Day 3 turned out to be just insane. We did some sick hikes to what became on this day, "our" peak, as no one else was hiking it at all today. We had a his and her chute, where mine had an air out at the bottom which required a 3m drop to exit, so Marilyn stuck to the next chute over for 2 runs, it was so cool looking back up the mountain and seeing my own lines closing my own tracks in one of the sickest chutes i have ever done, with Marilyn's tracks looking much the same just one chute over.
At 2 we decided that we had made it this far on only this section of the mountain, why bother going to the top as we had imagined we would do earlier that morning. So we stuck to what we knew, killing these chutes and smiling all the way down.
We took some sick shots of the terrain we did, check out pics on the images page under the Verbier album.
That evening we headed back to Lausanne to regroup and pick up Marilyn's new car. After living in Switzerland 3 years, Marilyn had finally gotten herself a car, no more relying on the trains, and she was very excited to say the least.
Where to next...?
