Last Sunday we got in the car and drove from Chamonix to Cervinia in Italy. It's a 2 hour drive, with around 65€ in various tolls, so it's a good idea to fill up your car with friends. 

It seems Cervina is currently the only open resort in the alps, which is easy for them since the base is at 2000 meters, going up to 3500 meters, or 3800 meters if you venture over to the Swiss side. But that costs extra, so make sure you don't accidentally end up there if you have an Italy-only pass. Like we did.

I was super rusty getting back on the board. It's been almost 4 years. It was funny riding the first few hundred meters though, getting used to it again. It seemed it was the first time for everyone else, and I had a hard job dodging falling skiers and riders left and right. By the end of the day I eventually managed to get some grabs in, instead of wailing my arms wildly, and felt comfortable on some steep off piste.

It hadn't snowed in three weeks, but the conditions were surprisingly good for this early in the season. They already had a little park up with some rails, and both half pipe and a big park was well under construction. 

The terrain is very inviting to play in, a bit of New Zealand/Riksgränsen-like rolling terrain with many natural features in the lower parts, and larger mountains higher up, especially on the Swizz (Zermatt) side. So I'd like to go back on a powder day. But everything is above the tree level, so watch out for white-outs. 

And then there was the Swiss drama.

After lunch we headed town to the nearest t-bar to move over to another part of the system. We accidentally missed the first t-bar, but the next one was nearby, so we went for that instead.

Bad idea.

It turned out to be the longest t-bar I've ever seen, and under no circumstances were we allowed a free lift back up. The very unfriendly old Italian manning the lift only knew two words in English. Fifteen. Euro. Which he repeated endlessly amongst a stream of angry Italian arm-waving. 3 que-jumping attempts, some traversing and a bit of hiking later, I was back at the top ridge, the Swiss-Italian boarder, the right way home, and just as the lifts closed for the day. Lucky! The girls made it up as well, without the traversing and hiking, having decided to ride back down and pay the price after all. Which amazingly they managed to avoid this time! So it was happy endings after all. We got to finish the day with a really long run, down the right valley this time, heading into the sunset.

Back home I submerged my now very sore body into a hot bath for a good 2 hours.