Enter Pren

So Friday was Pren’s first day ont’ hill. We headed over to Stuben, which is a bit of a slog to get to, although we’re now all of a level where we’re more than capable of chewing up the miles at a pretty snappy rate. Stuben’s a small hamlet-ey thing towards the ‘end’ of the main St. Anton area. It has a massive North face, which is usually cold and in shadow, and has a lot of accessible off-piste. A couple of antiquated two-man chairs haul you up the mountain, and you’re welcome to grab a blanket to put over your knees for the trip, providing you return it when you get to the top. Stuben worked quite well, as it enabled Pren to play around on the piste, getting her legs back, while Tony, Sylv and I hit the powder. And the rocks. And then some more rocks. My board is now pretty battered. In trying to avoid some rocks on a traverse, I tried to Olly them, made a complete hash of it, and ended up cartwheeling over even more rocks. I also, while cruising down the field, thinking about something completely irrelevant, ran smack-dab into a rock, and went flying. Another win for the helmet.

We had a few beers in the sun outside the KK, while everyone played with their new cameras. Honestly, the advantage of digital cameras is that you can take loads of photos, before choosing to keep only the decent ones. Unfortunately – and I’m as guilty as anyone – we don’t, do we? We keep the whole bloody lot.

And so to dinner plans.

Since Dunc and Ruari (pronounced ‘Roar-ey’, like a boisterous lion) were arriving that evening, at around midnight, I had half an eye on staying out to greet them with beers. With that in mind, we decided on Scotty’s. However, rather than have a pizza there, as I suggested, Pren – and here I quote – ‘really fancied an Austrian sausage’, so I booked the Hax’n Stub’n for five people, for eight o’clock. I then went home to pack, as I’d be moving to Haus Pateriol the next day. Reaching Scotty’s at ten to eight, I learned that Austrian sausage had very much fallen from grace as a potential meal, so I went back to cancel it, meeting Tony-no-phone at the same time, to redirect him to Scotty’s. It was at this point that I got a call from Dunc, informing me he’d missed his flight, and so would be catching some horrendously complicated set of connections overnight, to reach St. A at 8am. You know when you do a train timetable search between two destinations, it gives you five or six results at a time. They usually have one every hour, then, if it’s late at night, a stupid anomalous itinery thrown up by the system, which involves a twelve-hour journey with eight connections (and at least one river-raft leg) that no-one in their right mind would ever book. I’m pretty sure that’s the one Dunc chose.

We eventually retired reasonably early, with Pren and Sylv rather the worse for wear.