It’s Snow Beautiful I Could Ski Forever

Are you tired of my ski posts yet (and terrible puns)? If so, don’t worry, there’s only another four weeks or snow of the ski season left. 😝

But in all skireousness, here comes the post you’ve all been waiting for: the moment where I finally get my ski legs and graduate from the bunny slopes. And *drumroll please* …..where I only fall on my butt once! Yes, you read that right. 😇

The weekend after Vic and I did our ski lesson in level five avalanche warnings, the weather at Hochjoch in Montafon promised to be delightful and beautiful. Coralie, another teaching assistant who is kind of an expert skier, wanted to practice learning snowboarding, so she kindly agreed to hang out with me on the bunny slopes, where we could both practice. Somehow, we ended up staying out til two a.m. or so the night before, but lured by sunshine, blue skies, and coffee, we managed to wake up bright and early Saturday morning to get to the slopes reasonably early.

The weather was worth it — just a dream.

By the way, you know what I totally love about the train from Bludenz to Schruns? It has a special place for people to store their skis. How ingenious and useful when the train is crowded.

Another thing to keep in mind about the Montafon train is that as long as you have a ski pass, you don’t need to buy a separate train ticket to ride on this train. It doesn’t affect me so much, since I already have the year transportation ticket for all of Vorarlberg, but it’s nice for tourists. And usually if you’re dressed in ski gear, the train conductor almost never asks to see you ticket, which is nice if you don’t want to dig around in your pockets for it.

Funnily enough, we ran into David (another teaching assistant remember, aha) on the train. He was going skiing too — what were the chances?! (Let’s be real: he goes skiing almost every day, so the chances were pretty high.)

Coralie and I first went to the bunny slope (not pictured above), but we soon became bored with how slow the “magic carpet” ski lift was and decided to move on to the intermediate bunny slopes with the “button lift” (pictured above). This was certainly more intimidating than the first slope, but better to practice on. I partially fell on one of my turns, but otherwise managed to maintain my balance!

After about an hour or so, I was feeling really good about my stops and turns and feeling like I finally had the hang of it. Since we were a bit tired, we decided to take some photos and take a break back at the lodge and eat some snacks we had packed.

It was such a spectacular view!

After our break, Coralie said that it was time for us to do an actual blue slope — enough with the bunny slopes! I was really nervous about this, but Coralie was confident that we could do it.

There were a lot of skiers out that day, since the weather was so nice, so part of the slope had a lot of “moguls,” which made skiing rather bumpy. However, I’m very proud to say I managed to make it down the slope without falling over! Soon we were back at the bottom, and I was so happy to have done an actual ski route without having fallen over.

We didn’t stay too much longer after that, because we were both pretty tired, but all in all, it was a really good day of skiing. Later in the week I posted some photos on instagram, and it totally made my day that the official Montafon instagram account liked two of my photos (OMG! I felt like a celebrity! 😅).

Back in the valley, the sun was starting to set, highlighting the low clouds and peaks of the mountaintops in gold.

It’s days like this that make me wish I could somehow bottle up this whole experience and take it with me. I try to take in the experience on the mountains — the cool air blowing on my face, the rush of wind around my legs as I ski down the slope, the immense blue sky, the peaks of mountains in every direction. I try to take deep breaths to gulp in the mountain air, like I can swallow it and hold it inside me forever. But I know that no matter how much I try to memorize the feelings and the sensations or take pictures of the day, I can never entirely recreate the whole experience of being there. That makes it somewhat bittersweet, knowing that I’ll have to leave someday, but oh so special while I’m here. I’m really thankful for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be here. 💚

xo,

Sarah