Powder season is on. That´s basically the resume of last absolutely awesome weekend. As you know I was toying with the idea of Innsbrooklyn again. The forecast was showing some fresh there but not all that much. On Tuesday my friend Tine for the TEKOCHEE KRU band told me that he would be going riding over the weekend. His first time in seven years. The idea was to go to Italy. I was kinda skeptical first. Haven’t been to the Dolomiti for at least a decade and when I heard that we are going to Moena on the Passo San Pellegrino I was hyped. When I was a kid we went there and they had this super fast high tech cable car. It was so fast that it messed with the pressure in your ears. It was so cool. Went for a Pizza during the national anti government protests going on in our little country, planned it all out and bam were set. Tine Lugarič, Andrija Šulić, Miha Rogan, Nejc Stefanc and me were ready for some powder action.

We just had to pick up Nejc from the airport and off we were at 4 AM. His journey from Brussles turned out to be quite a ride. First his flight got delayed, then canceled and then we already contemplated picking him up in Padova when at last he arrived in Ljubljana a few minutes to midnight. Go air travel !

So at 8 AM we were already at Moena. There was already a bunch of powderhunters there and shops were setting up stands. Apparently for the opening there was also a powder ski test. They had everything you can imagine EXCEPT what I wanted to test.. Salomon. Grrr Oh well. I later found out that they have a slew of events planed for t season. This being the first one. 

One down for to go.

The lady at the ticket office was slow as hell in an Italian jacket that reminded me of the Dolomiti Superski in the 80s. Apparently efficiency-wise not much had changed. The Moena cable car was still the same.. superfast. They did change the gondolas thou… The old once still at the resort looked even today a lot more high tech… 

We still couldn`t belive how much snow was at the base already let alone at the top. The wepowder forcast was correct. On 50 base another 60-70 cm had fallen. It was cloudy so we decided to start with treeline stormriding. 

And on the first run I already had to save an Italian freerider who was just to unprepared for the conditions. I helped him get down to the station but it took forever. He promised me a beer that I never got.. but still he was thankful for the help. He kept on mumbling course words and how much of a pussy he felt because of that… and kept on asking me how to make turns in this amount of snow… seriously not cool.

 As the day progressed we did line after line after line and there was no end in sight. At times I was asking myself where all the Italians were as they were constantly sticking to the same descents. Lucky for us we found probably the best line from the cablecar station down and into a left leaning exit to the main valley. We spotted it from the other side of the valley. Sure you had to hike a little at the end but it was pillowland at the bottom. Fortunately there was enough snow to cover the rocks. I did ram one but no biggie. We had a few fun cliff drops too XD All in all two thumbs up.

I cut together a bit of the fun stuff form my go pro too so check it out above XD.

Riding without a break for the whole day took it`s toll. I was getting exhausted but we just couldn`t stop. After another treerun we decieded to call it a day. I really have to up my workout to be able to do at least 3 days in a row.

Next thing we needed to find a place to crash and eat. Moena was still closed completely and we almost gave up and were already heading back to the town of Falcade at the bottom of the pass when Miha sudenly hit the brakes hard and turned to te left onto a snowy road. There was a sing Refugio APERTO. A hut in the snow. Now that would be awesome. It took us some time to get to the hut in the middle of nowhere and it turned out to be quite the jackpot. Big, nice, shower, Weissbeer and the food. The chef seemed to be the gourmet kind of guy. First he made us a menu. Printed it out for us to choose and then we ate everything from mushroom teigsomething to jagdwild with sauce… we were so full that after another beer and half a powder movie we just went to sleep, coz well we had another powder day comming up ! And this time we even managed to squez a little photo session into it XD. More about that in the next post.

While there I wanted to do a long exposure time leaps but forgot that one of the dammed batteries had died so I had to settle for a few long exposures of the hut in the snow and the moon ! Wallpaper material XD aka “zimska idila”!