Snowboarding

Joel in Val d'lsere, France

Peruboarding's note: Joel is a Peruvian fellow that lives in Japan and is a good snowboarder and regular contributor of Peruboarding. This past February he was lucky enough to spend a few days in the amazing French ski resort called Val d'lsere. Here are his impressions.

Whow!!!! I wish I could find a better word to express what I experienced in 10 days up in those huuuuge French mountains. Val d'Isère is one the best places I've ever riden so far.

Twenty people in this gondola, we were all packed in this box with all our boards and skis.... But after 10 minutes hanging off this wire, all you can see is this white horizon line as far as you could see... Cool...

The first run was like kinda scary, because you don't really know where you're going... Just feels like you're under the control of physics' laws of gravity, just going down.

 I was going down really fast, and suddenly... 'whoow, stoooop!!!!'... Some of the slopes are so steep that you cannot see ahead of you... And you have to stop, because you could probably be dealing with a cliff, or a carp full of rocks and just.... ending up killing yourself... That'd be very sad, right?... Most of the runs were really really long, some of them, you could have a fag, have a sandwich and even brush your teeth if you feel like it, before you could even see the lifts! OK, I'm starving, I need to take a break, to recover... Lots of water, OK, that just won't be enough, find a place that sells food... It was so funny, seeing all those europeans sitting on long chairs, and just getting a tan on the top of the mountain... Man am I starving... I'd send my girlfriend to buy some food. And you know what I got?! She came back with two huuuuge enormous sandwiches, enough to keep me riding for the rest of the day...

I took one the small lift chairs and after hitting the top, I took off and started to hike up. A 20 minute walk, not much, but it took me to a nice freeriding spot, one out of hundreds you can find around there. I took the main line and, dude... it was sooo steep, I wonder how many degrees there were, but definitely more than 35. I felt like I was riding on a wall. A few days after we landed in Val d'Isère, we were heading to Tignes, which of course took us at least a couple of hours hanging on chairs... Another nice spot where we could enjoy more of those sandwiches (I'm talking like I went all the way to France just to have sandwiches!!!...).

Anyway, some extra cool runs, and a halfpipe, to which I didn't even go, because it was too far and I happened to be starving again (!!). Uh Oh... Time to go!! Just a little hour to get back to our little cosy appartment, and of course making a little detour to the supermarket to do some grocery shopping for dinner, which would turn out to be a romantic meal watching the fireworks... After that............ None of your business... Et oui, c'est l'amour...

10 days living in the same clothes, wearing the same smelly socks and eating sandwiches will make us spend our last day in the laundry... Quick check on the internet while our clothes are spinning dry to find out that our next destination will be Italy but that is another tomato sauce story... Ciao!

PS: If you wanna know more, go and check it out yourself: http://www.valdisere.com