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Cervinia powder weekend

Tuesday, 12. 16. 2008  –  Category: Snowboarding

What a start to the 2008-2009 snowboarding season! I had the pleasure of 4 days riding deep powder in Cervinia at the start of December.

For the last 4 years, I’ve always started the season in Cervinia, either late November or early December, 2 months before most people (in the UK at least) even start thinking about skiing/boarding. Cervinia is one of the highest spots in Europe, sharing a ski area with Zermatt’s glacier, so you can always be sure of some early season ridable slopes. For the last 2 years now, we’ve been blessed with full on powder runs right down to resort level.

This year, the locals have been saying its the best snow they’ve had in 15 years or more, and the whole of the Alps has had a great start.

We arrived on the Wednesday night, hit a couple of pubs and found the place to be eerily empty. First lifts up on Thursday morning - and throughout the day, the trend continued: few people on the mountain, no lift queues, plus exceptional visibility in the morning with clear blue skies, slightly clouding over later on. And the snow… not perfect, but still powder to be found on the edge of the pistes with a big dump forecast overnight.

We got the 3 big lifts stright up to Plateau Rosa, and rode all the way down to Zermatt, taking the Riffelberg Express lift up, and sessioned the 6-seat chair lift for a couple of hours. Some sweet off-piste with the pow nicely softened from the morning sun. Great fun hitting the natural terrain, some big rollers, jumping off a hut burried under the recent snow.

We took a variety of runs around the area, including the train up to Gornergrat, before riding back down to Furi.

Just before getting on the last section of lift required to get us all the way to Furi (last section not ridable) and the lift up to Trockener Steg for lunch, one of the patches in the base of my old F2 Sonic had started coming out. Pretty bad workmanship, as I’d only done half a day by this point and mostly on well groomed pistes and powder, and certainly hadn’t hit any rocks. I cut out the flapping section, but wasn’t long into the afternoon that the whole thing had come out leaving the base exposed.

I managed to get a good repair job done overnight that lasted the rest of the trip fortunately, but am due a new board now. If you follow me on Twitter you’ll know I’ve been trying to decide between an Arbor Element, K2 Zeppelin or K2 Believer. I might post about the dilema in hope of solving it!

So, after crying into my spaggetti about the demise of my trusty old stick, we then faced a freezing t-bar ride back in the direction of Cervinia, and the long ride back down to resort… with a hole in my board. Surprisingly it wasn’t too noticeable.

We knew the next day was destined to be a white out, so treated ourselves to a big night on the beers and a leasurely start - getting our first lift at 11am. It had dumped big over night, and was still snowing at times. The snow was great, but you really couldn’t see much. A bit of snowboarding around Plan Maison before heading over to the right hand side of the mountain and sessioning the Lago Goillet lift all afternoon. The sun came out - bright blue skies - against all forecasts we’d seen. And with the powder topping over the last 20 hours or so we were treated to an excellent afternoon’s snowboarding, staying out til last lift.

The avalanche risk was level 4, so we had to be cautious and not tuck into all the untouched off piste around us, but there was still plenty that we let ourselves get involved with, and no signs of any slides in the area that day. But the 3 or 4 hours we spent doing that one lift over and over again have to go down as some of my favourite ever.

Buoyed up by a great afternoon and more snowfall due over night ANOTHER booze-fuelled night out was on the cards. Unfortunately the next day was a total right off in more ways than one. Bad hang overs and terrible visibility, as the snow kept coming down. It’s such a shame when you can’t see anything but know the powder is in such great shape. We had a few enjoyable runs, especially round Cieloalto, and you can never really complain about chest deep powder, can you?

A more relaxed night after day 3 on the slopes, taking in a few football matches in the Yeti (Blackburn v Liverpool, Man U v Sunderland, and Lazio vs Inter) before heading to bed ready for our final day - forecast perfect blue skies. It didn’t disappoint.

We got the lifts straight up to Plateau Rosa again, riding back down the Theodulpass to Plan Masion. The pisteurs were out working on the Indian Park, which like everywhere else on the mountain had been buried under the recent heavy snow, so we had to give the park a miss this trip unfortunately. Maybe next time.

From Plan Maison, there was no question where we’d be going. Straight back to Cime Bianche, the Lago Goillet lift and the Gran Sometta runs where we spent the afternoon a couple of days before. The snow had had a little more time to settle, so it wasn’t as fresh as before but it was more stable allowing us to pick new lines and cover more ground than before. That afternoon was every bit as enjoyable as the previous one and goes down in my all time great snowboarding moments.

We spent all afternoon playing in the pow, picking lines, jumping ledges, dropping cliffs, pulling spins, face planting, head planting, cartwheeling and backflipping. So much fun, and a great way to wrap up our early season trip.

Back down the hill, a quick run down the line of the Bordoney lift and we were done. Time to dig out the car and head for home.

Ending sidenote: Usually our Cervinia trips had been big group afairs, anything from 6 to 20 people. This time there were just 2 of us, which made a refreshing change. Whilst I love the big groups, you do tend to get slowed down, waiting for people to get ready in the morning, waiting on the hill for the slow riders, and innevitably get shamed by having skiers in your group! With just 2 of us, we could ride at our own pace (fast), basically do whatever we wanted, when we wanted. I’m all for at least one trip a season like this - no more than 3 or 4 people all of the same ability and intentions.

Tags: Cervinia, Italy, Snowboarding, Switzerland, trip reports, Zermatt