Geographically challenged

Another day, another lie-in. This time, woken up by Tony knocking on my door, clearly after my cheese... One of the features of Haus Kohlerech (look, ‘HK’ from now on, as I keep forgetting how to spell ‘Kohlerech’) is the daily delivery of fresh bread rolls, which are to be found hanging in a cloth bag on the door handle every morning. Of course, bread on it’s own isn’t so interesting, but luckily I have (well, had) a fridge crammed full of cheese, ham, nuttela and all sorts of other uncommonly good things. So, we meet Dex at the Galzigbahn (the main cable car), after first having retrieved my newly-patched board from Snow Control. No Sylv today, as she’s off in Zurich, armed with the keys to my apartment (Oh shit! And office!) and a list of decent restaurants and bars. Who knows, frankly.

This week, for some reason, seems to be relatively quiet in St. Anton, and I think it’s worth earmarking the second week in January as a good bet for next year. The cable car rides to the top of Valluga were spacious by comparison with previous years. We headed off, with me in the lead (y’know, being ‘the local boy’). I kid you not when I say we’d lost each other within the space of thirty minutes. Somehow, I went one way, Tony went the other, and Dex, caught between a rock and a hard place, followed Tony. After much sitting around and waiting, I figured I was just as likely to find them on the move as sitting in one place (plus it's warmer). I found myself passing Dex on the way down Happy Valley (a long, wide valley trail that most people on the mountain join on the way home.). It turned out that he’d just managed to lose Tony too. I’m just glad we didn’t have our probes and shovels with us, as we’d be truly worthy of the label ‘All the gear, no idea.’

After more fooling around on the slopes (I managed some rather rudimentary front-side one-eighties, and a couple of highly technical ‘landing-on-my-arse’-es), we stopped in at the place-with-the-cute-waitress-who-likes-facial-hair-but-not-too-much (Sylv will make conversation on any subject) for food and a cheeky beer. One of the things I’m finding tough about living here is the urge to get leathered from 4pm every day. It’s very doable (and, actually, pretty much compulsory) when you’re here for six days, but when it’s over three weeks, well, it’s not going to happen. So it was with some reluctance we headed to the supermarket for provisions so we could cook at home…

…which, since we forgot any sort of sauce for the spag-bol, completely failed to happen. We ended up walking down and eating in town anyway, surrounded by the sort of drunken idiots that we’ve epitomised in previous years. Oh well, I reckon two or three nights ‘on it’ a week should suffice…

Weather, incidentally is, well, identical. Same forecast for the next few days, which is fine for piste-bashing and riding switch, but some more powder would be most welcome. Sun tan or snow? Hmm…