Verbier, Switzerland

I skied in the Swiss Alps!!!! …In jeans… It was so amazing though! I’m really glad I was able to take that trip.  We flew into Geneva, Switzerland last Friday night and rented a car. Sam drove (in a manual car), Ryan worked the GPS (it was in German) and I sat in the back (with all the coats and such). We drove through the mountains and tunnels and were always in awe when we would unexpectedly come across a city’s lights in the valley.

We reached our hostel, which was an old bomb shelter in the early hours. There was nobody else there when we arrived so we were alone in the hostel for the first night, which was a bit creepy. There was also a distinct smell about the hostel that wasn’t exactly pleasing. But it was a bed to sleep in and we all wanted sleep! Sam unfortunately realized when we got there that he forgot to pack his sleeping bag. We found some sheets, hoped they were clean and fell asleep.

The next morning Ryan realized he forgot his gloves. I was feeling good about not forgetting anything too important at that point. We rented boots and skis (with Franks- the Switzerland currency) and walked a couple minutes down the rode to where a there was a gondola lift that took us to the top of the mountain! As we were putting boots/hats/gloves/etc. before getting on the gondola I realized that my gloves had fallen out of my boots at some point. So I ended up being in the same boat as Ryan- no gloves.

At the bottom when we looked up at the mountain we couldn’t see the top, partway through the ride up we were in fog, and once at the top we could see many mountain peaks, a line of clouds and the valley below. It was a beautiful sight! Unfortunately my camera died halfway through the first day, but I still got a lot of great pictures, as did Sam and Ryan.

Sam and Ryan are both great skiers! Before Verbier I hadn’t skied in a couple of years. My family and I have been to Montana and Colorado before on ski trips and so I figured that after a couple times down the mountain then I would be used to skiing again and be able to keep up with the guys. I was mistaken. The slopes seemed steeper and icier than what I remembered past slopes being like. I think that in places in America the slopes are groomed so that they’re mostly flat and even. In Verbier there was powder right next to a patch of icy snow right next to a bump of snow and so it was difficult for me to find a good rhythm of skiing. Sam and Ryan were doing great and I didn’t want to slow them down so I told them to go wherever they wanted to go and we picked a place to meet up later on.

The rest of that day I’m pretty sure I fell at least once every time I went down a slope. Fortunately none of my falls were painful nor did a break anything- bone or ski. I would usually just slide for a really long time until I stopped and then people would look at me and think, “Oh, she’s in jeans. That explains everything.” And they would help me get my skis back on and stand up and such. More people than I expected spoke English, which was good! Thanks to the amazingly nice weather I was never cold! Even though I fell multiple times and didn’t have gloves the sun and adrenaline kept me warm!

We were all exhausted after day one. We ate dinner at a nice restaurant in Verbier, which was tasty and went to bed fairly early and were up again the next morning for some more skiing. I stayed with the guys throughout day two. I was slower than them, and as the runs were all quite lengthy with many forks in the road, they had to wait for me at different points but it was fine I think. Many of the trails we were on were wide enough for twoish skiers and then it would just drop off on the side. I was always extra cautious on these trails for obvious reasons. There was one gondola lift that we took which held over 100 people! It was a little scary.

Our flight left for home at 6am on Sunday. We drove back to the airport Saturday night and attempted (and kind of succeeded) to sleep in our car for a few hours. We then hung out in the airport for a while longer and came home extremely exhausted, but it was well worth the exhaustion.