It’s 2007, a global financial crisis and my failing marriage combine to inspire me to shake off the cobwebs and force feed myself a new hobby, one that I had been attracted to for a few years already but had never tried. This, despite having a deep rooted passion for the hills, the outdoors and a long term addiction to the mountain bike.
This newfound pursuit would require a short flight and the purchasing of some new equipment, but was a natural progression from skateboarding which I had done for many years and gave the chance to see and enjoy the high mountains under snow. Considering that I had been on earth three decades by this point, I figured it was about time I saw the alps up close and in person, not just from the seat of an aeroplane travelling over them.
From the very first day the mountains here had both my attention and respect, then from the second day I realised that the sport of sliding down a mountain on a piece of crafted wood had taken a hold of my heart and would never let me go. I say from the second day as I hadn’t been a novice at anything since I was 17 and learning to drive, or trying to figure out how to ride a two-wheeler as a toddler. But by that second day and having taken two mornings with an instructor, my determination to quickly adapt to this skill meant that I could descend at a fair pace goofy or regular many dozens of times a day, absorbing new ways of carving faster and with more control on each drop.
After a few days I had bought my first board and spent eight hours a day, with mates and somedays alone, testing my newly acquired skills in pursuit of speed and aesthetics I could be pleased with.
By the time we left the resort of Tignes, I was proud to regard myself as a snowboarder in some part. Plenty of scope to improve but competent beyond my first week of involvement in what is a life-long passion for most who do it.
Owing to the timing of that initial taste, I then had to wait all summer and autumn before I could get another fix. So in December of the same year (and now divorced) I made another trip out to Tignes for the Christmas and New Year of 2007, wanting to see out a year best forgotten. With many of the same friends as the April session, that Christmas we saw record dumps and I also witnessed the kind of advancement in my snowboarding that comes with drunken exuberance, high spirits and the sort of commitment to task my ex-wife had never been able to coax from me.
The sport to me takes the best aspects of downhill mountain biking, adds a further level of connectivity to the ground and then it sprinkles on more – more speed, more altitude and more freedom of choice. Gone are the restrictions of course design and relatively short run lengths, and in their place are drops of over 10kms, off piste options pretty much everywhere you don’t turn and 80kph top speeds that have more in common with road cycling, without the traffic!
Hooked to the way of life now and confident in my burgeoning abilities, my friend Sam and I planned a trip in February to the new resort of Revelstoke (opened 2007) in Canada, where we would meet up with another mate Guto of the band ‘Super Furry Animals‘, as they finished their tour of North America.
Somewhere though, between leaving the French alps and the swift arrival of this Canadian expedition, I managed to break my foot (5th metatarsal) and after a week in cast had removed it myself so I could travel out just after Valentines Day. My new girlfriend was against the idea, but my rationale was that the injury was ‘on the mend’, I was travelling with Sam (a surgeon) and I would spend the entire time wearing very ‘cast-like’ snowboard boots (one thing I didn’t factor in was the putting on and taking off of said boots, which was a new definition in pain). It’s also worth noting that an ‘avulsion fracture’ only requires a cast for between 2-8 weeks and so, although pushing it a little, I was adhering to protocol at least vaguely.
Anyway, we left on the winged powder express to Canada, me having caught the train the previous night to Sam’s in order to avoid unnecessary ‘clutch work’ in my manual Audi TT. When we arrived it was a major eye opener both in terms of the levels of ‘chowder’ that fell on us during the holiday, but also the adaptions needed for deep powder riding on this, my third snowboarding trip.
Highlights for me included buying a Burton T6 (fairly cutting edge in 2008, and one of the most expensive then at $800), spending 50% of our time in the backcountry and heliboarding for the first time in my life (Revelstoke is now known as the ‘heli-boarding capital of the world’). We all ate very well during the fortnight, both at the hotel and also the various waffle houses and steak restaurants around. I tried to rest my foot every night as it fought hard to heal itself against all odds.
As we took off from Canada and I headed to my then home in Wales, my future as far as the sport was concerned had been solidified, and twenty years on I found myself reflecting on those distant but still fresh feelings that I remember catching on those first few trips. Life shaping they were, in more ways than one.
Saturday just gone I spent the entire day alone up in the mountains around our home in Val d’Isere, the very same ski area that introduced me to this way of life all those years ago. Afforded the ability to board any time I choose nowadays, I tend to wait for bluebird days under a fresh powder coating, something we are lucky to experience fairly often here through a long season.
What occurs to me during days I spend atop one of my many options from the likes of Burton, Jones or Libtech (I still have the T6 in case you are wondering) is that not a thing has really changed. Sure, I am older now but this doesn’t limit me at all yet and nor should it, with my knowledge of the local terrain, conditions and the various disciplines of the sport acquired over two decades. But I refer to the pure sense of speed, connection to the elements and my adoration of the feelings I achieve travelling vast distances by board, in those I lose myself in just the same way as in 2007.
Few things in life bring me such joy as this sport and I will continue to seek new lines, whilst remaining grateful to the forefathers of this magnificent pastime, who I owe a debt of gratitude. I thanks my stars I came out here in search of something I now couldn’t imagine my life without. A love affair for a lifetime. If you’ve not tried it yourself and are marvelling at the demonstrations of pure wizardry at the Winter Olympics, please do give it a go and I’m sure you’ll not be disappointed.
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