journey

MG Snowtrip 2017

There is a snowtrip that more or less seems to mark the end of the snow season in recent years. The MG Snowtrip usually takes place around Easter holidays and for most Portuguese snow-lovers it’s a ‘see you next year’ kinda thing (see me going all sentimental about it here). This year’s edition was way bigger than 2016 and I was invited to write a story about it in the local magazine Algarve Informativo. You can read the result from page 46 onwards, enjoy!

(Even if you can’t read Portuguese, the photographic work from professional action sports photographer Joe Mann / GOT IT Shootings is surely enough to dazzle you…)

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The true reason why we ride

Well this is a big claim. I am sure that we all can come up with all sorts of reasons to ride whatever vehicle we choose, either skateboards, surfboards, snowboards, or even skis, boogieboards, bikes, motorbikes, or even your kid’s tricycle.

But man, few things get us as stoked as sharing a sunset ride with a friend at the end of the day. Fuel for the soul.

So I’ll make a call on this one and claim that as a (or the) true reason to do what we do.

Freshlines Boards head honcho Hugo and mountain master Freddy searching for the meaning of life somewhere in the Alps.

Trivia on off-season travelling (or how we met Winter in plain Autumn)

Every winter sports enthusiast knows the feeling: the days get shorter, the nights start to get colder and we start looking into weather forecast for the nearest mountains. Yep, winter is coming. But in full climate change process (no, it’s not a hoax by the Chinese) booking a 5-day trip to snowboard in November is a shot in the dark. When we did, we aimed high enough to be safe and so that we’d have at least something to slide on. So choosing the Stubai glacier was not at all a random choice – and did I mention it hosts the Stubai Zoo, one of the best and most hyped snowparks in the Alps?

img-20161112-wa0015(click by Vasco Abreu)

Book flights, make contacts, let’s go. As usual, weather forecasts in Autumn are not really trustworthy, especially when talking about a glacier. But we did know that there would be snow – just weren’t sure how much of it, and when. There was a huge chance that we’d catch bad weather. Hell yeah, we did! We got more than we bargained for, with 2 days of closed skies and temperatures as low as -15ºC up in the peaks. And snowfall, lots of it.

(clicks by Brian Fernandes and Vasco Abreu)

The glacier resort itself had 25km of marked slopes open, which was not bad at all for this time of the year. And with the recent snowfall and low temperatures it really felt like winter. Visibility was crap though, and the wind was strong in the high alpine. Due to that the park was mostly closed in the first days. But the open pistes were more than enough to keep our rusty legs entertained. Even more so were the side-country slopes that looked really good for some off piste riding. Wrong choice! Peer pressure and the craving for powder after a long summer can truly hinder your choices: think thrice before you venture off piste! Nothing really bad happened except for some board carnage and ego damage. But things can go severely sour when these factors come together: early season, glacier, short base layer and sharks. When in doubt, there’s no doubt, don’t go out. Even if the clouds go away and the mountains look as awesome as this.

20161112_122021(click by João Saraiva)

Well they eventually did go away and the sun came out on a beautiful Saturday. And so did the crowds. Geeeez, hundreds, thousands of tourists, locals and pros just stormed in and made it feel like Sierra Nevada after a dump on a weekend. The park quickly became filled with high-level riders, and the one lift that was open (come on, one draglift for the whole park? You gotta be kidding!) queued like there was no tomorrow. Back to the pistes it was, but we managed to steal some quick shots just to say we were there.

So was it worth it? Definitely! Would we go back and do the same? Yep, but my advice is choose your dates wisely to avoid major weekends. Better yet, keep your options open to visit other glaciers nearby: Hintertux is 1.30h drive from Neustift where we were based, and Kaunertal and Pitztal are 2h away for example. They all have amazing snowparks, are open in the pre-season and can be an option even if you’re aiming for the Stubai mojo.

img-20161111-wa0016(click by Brian Fernandes)

Best advice? Leave your riding destination open and make you base in Innsbruck. From there you’ll have plenty to choose from and you’ll get to experience the vibe of a beautiful city that is home of a large community of snow lovers.

img-20161113-wa0006img-20161110-wa000920160129_133332(clicks by André Pisco, Brian Fernandes and João Saraiva)

What are you waiting for?

 

 

The Perfect Winter timelapse

When I first imagined spending a winter in the Alps, the image that immediately popped into my mind was not speeding down a slope, or jumping off a kicker. It was simply waking up every morning in the silence of the mountains, opening the window and seeing the white powdery stuff covering everything. The quiet, the calm, the Zen. This is essentially what I came to Tirol for. So every morning (well, almost) from January to March 2016 I took a picture from my window in the mountain hut in Gerlosberg. This is the result.

I don’t know about you, but this gets me pumped to go shred as much as any Red Bull super production video. Just sayin’.

Winter is coming, or so they say

Although we’re coming into October, there’s no sign of winter here in the South of Portugal. Not only have we been having temperatures around the 30º C, waves have been pumping in the south coast – best summer ever for surfing, I dare say. Look at this photo from yesterday:

 

Not only there are surf vibes everywhere, the  warm weather forecast will keep pushing us to the beach for the next weeks. No wonder it’s hard to change into the Winter gear. Not even the world premiere of Travis Rice’s “The Fourth Phase” on October 2 is really appealing the snowboard mode.

Nonetheless, we’re making plans to hit the mountain roads. We’re aiming high – 3200 m high, to be exact. Stubai Gletscher, here we come.

The Perfect Winter TV interview

It’s finally online!

I was invited to talk about The Perfect Winter on Segunda pele, an action sports show at Sport TV. I was honoured by this invitation – after all, this was a personal project that I wanted to share with people, and to think that it was interesting enough to get media attention is very rewarding!

I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did being there. Talking about the trip and showing videos and pictures is always good, makes me be there again somehow. Thank you Catarina Faustino for this opportunity to share The Perfect Winter with you.

 

I know what you did last winter

It’s a wrap, as they say. Spring has arrived to the Algarve, all the snow gear is washed and stored until next season (or, who knows, some glacier shredding sometime in summer), and all that’s left of winter are the memories. It’s a good thing that Youtube is around the almighty internet so that we can store and share moving images of happy times. Because, you know, even memories fade unless you exercise them.

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I would love to have more of these videos to watch again and again, and every time I watch them I think I should have filmed them differently. Fear not, because a proper video campaign is being planned. Maybe, just maybe there will be yet another Perfect Winter.

In the meantime, enjoy the playlist of this year’s edition.

Closing the circle

12.105km.

3 countries.

16 resorts.

82 days, 3 hours and 22 minutes.

Thousands of powder turns.

Hundreds of kicker jumps.

Zero severe injuries.

Countless new friends.

These are some of the numbers of the Perfect Winter. But you know as well I do that there is much more to a long trip than mere numbers. While I’m finding it difficult  to stay away from emotional clichés when talking about this season in the Alps, let me try to stick to the facts of these last few months.

One of the big objectives of The Perfect Winter was to witness the changing of the seasons. In Portugal, especially in the south, spring and fall are kind of extensions of a long summer. Even our winter is very mild when compared to higher latitutes. Therefore, we are not used to the changes that come as Earth spins around the sun. In the Alps, on the other hand, these changes are not only obvious but they also profoundly affect the lives of the people living in and around the mountains. First of all, green and brown give place to a magical white carpet covering everything. I was fortunate enough to witness the first heavy snowfall that kicked this late winter into full gear.

At first I didn’t grasp the true importance of this in Alpine life, but it’s pretty obvious. While this generation relies on snow to make ends meet as it attracts tourists, previous generations would wait for snow to cover the fields and fertilize the earth for cattle grazing and crops. It’s scary to think that all this can change as winters get shorter and snow falls higher and higher.

I must say that even thought this winter was far from harsh, I enjoyed it to the maximum. Because I was there all the time and with the right people, I could go out whenever conditions were perfect. You can read all about this throughout this blog…

Eventually the season in Tirol came to an end. By the time of departure spring had arrived and once again I was privileged enough to witness the changing of the season, as the snow starts to melt and the grass starts to grow.

This time the arrival of a new season had a strong impact. After  my first winter in the mountains I could really feel the days getting longer, and the warmer temperatures seeping through the valley. Experiencing the incoming Spring is hard to describe in words, and quite pointless at this time actually. However, while it did put a different positive vibe into the daily routines, it meant that Perfect Winter was ending.

I left Tirol on March 15, and headed West towards the beautiful village of Villars, in the Vaudoises Alps in Switzlerland. This town and the surrounding mountains are a picture perfect place – but extremely expensive. The obscene prices around here were simply an insult for someone coming from southern Europe, even after spending a season in Austria where the cost of living can be similar to that of Portugal if you shop smart. However, I was invited by friends to stay over and their company largely compensated for this financial shock. I ended up exploring most of the amazing mountains in Villars, Les Diablerets and Glacier 3000 in just 2 days, with a hint of local knowledge and chilled vibe. Thank you David and André!

The final stage of this journey would really represent the closing of the circle. Most of us usually started skiing or snowboarding  with friends, and still spend their holidays in the mountains in groups, and friends are probably the most important part of every snowtrip. Most of the fun comes from the people you are with, regardless of the snow conditions or how nice the place is. So being reunited with the MG Snowtrip family in France, who I have travelling with for some time now, was indeed returning to the origins of snowboarding: sliding down slopes with your snow buddies. I would be lying if I said that it didn’t take some time to adjust to be snowboarding with other people around me instead of simply roaming free, but in the end it’s just another way to enjoy life in high altitude.

There are hundreds of photos of this amazing gathering of friends and snow enthusiasts here and here, so I’l just post one that shows the good spirit present in this snowtrip.

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The drive back to good old Portugal was nice and easy. I was blessed with amazing waves right when I arrived, and pretty much that sums up the invaluable experience from this Perfect Winter.

However, the ride is never over. There will be more winters to spend and more paths to travel.

Ride on.

 

The ride

While browsing through my stash of pictures, first starting with the Perfect Winter facebook page and then through my own archives, I realized how there seems to be a thread linking apparently unrelated events. It’s amazing how people, music, ocean, waves, mountain, forest, beach are all part of this universal Love ride that is Life. There is so much beauty out there, so many things to be experienced, so many people to meet and know, so much to learn, so much to teach.

This trip has been just so enriching in so many ways, far more than I expected – and all it took was to leave my comfort zone and do it. Solo traveling is never so. In fact, it’s the only way to really travel without being solo, without being bounded by your own expectations. When you travel in a group from the start, you always tend to be closing your circle, and you bound your experience of your trip by the collective perception, that already is there in the first place. But when you travel alone, there is no boundary, you open yourself to everything and everyone around you. Unless you don’t want to, but then again it’s always your choice.

In the end, either traveling or staying, there is only one that you are always with. It’s you. It’s your ride. Make it count.

IMG_9452-1www.gotit.at