After the in mid summer HighLab visit it is time to return to the season recap 🙂 We continue were we left off last time in Zauchnesee:

ZAUCHENSEE/FLACHAU

As I mentioned last time the accident with the dead German freerider at Zauschensee proved to be the start of a very bad day for our friends Anna and Sina. Ranja from Germany joined us last minute for a few more days of adventure. Gambling till the last second if we were going to stay local or go to Sillian laziness prevailed and we decided to go to Flachau.

50 cm had fallen... we where hiking knee deep at Flachauwinkl — 50 cm had fallen… we where hiking knee deep at Flachauwinkl

Sure it`s the Park resort with the clubhouse and Absolutpark but If you know where to go there are a few nice tree lines on the western side. And since it dumped like 50 cm over night we were eager to get deep into the trees. Boy the hiking that day was taxing. Deep in fresh up to your bellybutton moving in settled not so fluffy snow was hard.. but it payed off big time.

Around midday we got a call. It wasn`t good. Anna and Sina went to Zauch and we wanted to meet up a little later, but as we learned, Sina had fallen and hurt her foot so Anna had to drag her down because the mountain rescue was so exhausted from looking for the now deceased german freerider the whole night earlier that they could not send anyone up. We packed our asses over to the other side but the girls had already managed to get down to the doctor and the diagnosis was official. Sina had torn her ACL on the last weekend of her time in the Schladming area :S. We got a few more good lines that day but it was with a bit of a bad aftertaste…

Finally ready yo go after a long deep hike

Chiemsee and Cirkus Ischgl

A week passed and I got a call from Tobi. He asked for some “bro”-support for the last stop of the Chiemsee “Das beste Jahr deines Lebens” tour in Ischgl. I will be honest. Ischgl has tons for freeride potential… but it is for me also the best example of why there is something like a Masterplan when u make a resort. The resort itself to me is just revolting.

The good thing is that you can always go over to the Samnaun side and get cheap booz… yay. Regardless of that we made a nice day out if it in the iced out twilight diffused, badly shaped park and I also took a few nice Fotos for their blog :), and If you accepted the fact that the landings were icy as hell, the kickers weren`t that bad 😛

Since there was some wind we also went snowkiting

Spring breaks – Mayerhofen and FISS have nice kickers

I love these kickers... they were just so good...so good. — I love these kickers… they were just so good…so good.

Well now we were approaching end of March on the winter timeline so after the temps rose to 24 degrees even in Innsbruck I already had half burred my powskis… it was time for some fun in the park. I called up Aljosa… packed my ass from rainy Ljubljana and bum next day Penkenpark it was… the first day of park in a long time 😛 And so it felt. Kickers were really awesome but damned I couldn`t even ride switch for half a day…

The akward moment your binding releases for no reason

That of course changed on the next day when we went to Serfaus/FISS. We went to the proline and were looking at the kickers… first we thought:”dude … they are kinda big”. Both of us skeptical… kinda intimidated.. not knowing speed or if we were even in shape to ride them… we almost gave up and wanted to go the to medium park on the north side.. when suddenly bam… we tried them… and bam… suddenly they were absolutely awesomeness XD Best park day of the season so hands down 😛 Of course my beloved park bindings were doing there regular release when you shouldn`t thing again.. That got me a nice big scar on my back since it was the only f****** day I had left my back protector at home in Slovenia.