Well first off the 100.000 GIVEAWAY found quite a few right answers. All of you who found the scho-ziemlich.oarg sticker on my quadrocopter box were entered int the prize draw. Then a random selector   script on the Internet selected the winner. That was Alen Borak from Maribor. So congrats dude 🙂 You were lucky and you will be getting the stuff next time im in Maribor 🙂

Last Wednesday, after checking the local reports, and knowing that not much would be going on around here in Slovenia, I quickly packed my stuff, picked up my local riding buddy and the winter Innsbruck migrant Aljoša, with a ton of his stuff and took off back to Tirol. I had already decided, that I’m going to change my original winter plan so it was time once again to get the TIROL SNOWCARD. It wasn’t a tough decision, taking into account, that almost all ski resorts in Tirol are included in the card. 86. That`s quite a number. For 700 bucks. Now if you are a student it gets cheaper. Well, I was able to get the daily ticket price down to 13 bucks last year, so it was a no-brainer.

So Friday came, the weather was super sunny, very cold, and windblown. We headed out to Sölden, to have some fun. Sure it wasn’t powder day, but it was super fun to hang around with my good buddies and just enjoyed skiing. When we arrived at the glacier, we saw a giant kicker being constructed. First we thought, that they might be moving the Park, to the Glacier, but we were mistaking.

As it turned out a few days later, the whole thing was a setup for an ad, that Samsung would be shooting at multiple locations in the Alps. Aerials were being shot by Slovenian Kopterworx in Innsbruck, and additional footage in the morning we hours at Molltal in Carintiha. Samsung is the official technical sponsor for the Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014, but apparently since there is no snow there yet the ads that will be used are being shot right here in our beautiful Alps.

Well, then Saturday came with a bit of a crappy forecast, which turned out to be quite the best of the three days. David and I met up with a few other buddies at Lizum resort. They had there opening day, and it was a lot less crowded than I had originally anticipated. It is the local go to for a quick powder run and while being in the cloud in the morning, clearing up in the afternoon we could find a few lines. Nothing special, but still fun. And the Misty Mountains with the rainbows, and the glow looked truly unreal.

So while being pumped from that, I had another little toy and a big plan for Sunday. A while back I bought a little Quadrocopter, capable of carrying a go pro. Just the thing for a few aerial filler shots and maybe a follow cam or two.

Cracking up to be a nice sunny day with little wind. We decided, in light of my planned test, that we would go to Stubai. I wanted to get some filler footage of a few mountain ridges that I had been on the previous season. So I dragged all the equipment up to the top of the mountain just to find out that unlike the projection, it was super windy. A little demotivated, in the end I had to be satisfied, by filming the dumb parking lot at the bottom of the valley. It was fun though terrorising bystanders with my little UFO. And I must say that as far as architectural photography goes, it’s a perfect shot of a parking lot. So the wind screwed up my test, and the snowfall was not all that it was cracked up to be, but still being in the middle of the Alps in perfect sunshine makes one feel blessed and happy to have gone all the way to Tyrol again.

so we lit up the tree !

Clari was already in the christmas spirit

You might be asking yourselves, why the game of thrones reference in the title. While basically because it comes down to snow and wind and inspiration from the recent southpark episodes XD. As the openings are behind us mostly, winter it hit the Alps with are very persistent snow cover. The temperatures, thanks to a few “retur the est” and cold air coming from the North, are staying low and the snow is staying good. But, as that perfect that that might sound, it’s not quite so rosy. You see, with the low temperatures, the Sun, and very stable, I’d almost say constant snowfall on most of the Alps, the snow cover has turned to windblown hardpack with dangerous slab areas of lots of fluffy stuff. It might be perfect weather, for doing your laps in the parks and skiing the pists, as well as light touring,but the number of powder days with face shots is still limited. It’s true that we might be expecting too much at this point, as we should not forget that December has barely started. But first off for the next 10 days well see more sun and less snow… cross ur fingers and write santa about the christmas dump we need. Most Midtree resorts need at least another 50 cm to be ok to ride.