Whiteout!

The last time I had gone snow boarding was Christmas Day, which was quite a while ago. I decided last week that I wasn't going to let another day of winter go by without doing a little more snow boarding... no matter how miserable the conditions are! I told myself that it cannot possibly be as bad as everyone says it is and that I just need to get out there. Boy was I wrong... but in a most unexpected way.

I should have known there was going to be trouble when it took my friend Mr. S and I almost the whole day to get to the slopes. We were supposed to meet at the train station at 9:00... of course I was a few minutes late, and we discovered that we missed the 9:05 train and we would have to wait until 10:30 for the next one! We grabbed breakfast and waited it out. On our journey there is a transfer to another train about an hour from Geneva. We got off the first train and waited. And waited. And waited. Our transfer was only supposed to be 12 minutes, but then 20 minutes later, we thought there must be something amiss. Low and behold, we were on the wrong track!! Another hour plus wait until the next train. Unbelievable!!!

But we did make it to Verbier (a very big and pretty nice resort), it was almost 2:30, but we were there. we popped our stuff in a locker, jumped on the gondola and were on our way to the top. The snow on the bottom was really, really bad. The runs were literally brown from all the dirt under the snow, and you could see the huge amount of rocks poking through the runs. But we were on our way to the top, so we didn't worry about that. Our only care was the quite foggy conditions, but it was clearing up... or so we thought.

So, what's the big deal about a little fog? After all, I did grow up in Daly City, which is just about the foggiest place on the planet. We hopped of the gondola and onto a high speed 6-person lift, which was all but deserted. This should have been a sign, but we continued on. The fog got thicker and brighter the higher we got. We MUST be on the verge of breaking through this, we kept thinking. But the lift ended and by now the fog was so thick that we almost missed the part where we had to disembark!

The fog was thick - so thick that we didn't even know which direction to go once we got off the lift. You literally could not see five feet in front of you! We inched our way in the direction of the tracks in the snow and came across a couple of other people that looked just as dazed and confused as we were. We decided on a plan of action and started snowboarding, VERY SLOWLY, down the hill - totally blind.

The complete whiteout conditions were messing with our eyes and sense of balance. I was getting vertigo and I could see little black flecks swimming in my vision. There were no trees for reference and it was extremely hard to stay on the run. One time we strayed off the run and we had to listen for people to find it again, even though we were only 20 feet from the run! At times it was even hard to tell how fast I was moving, although it wasn't very fast at all. I felt that at any moment I would go careening off the edge and never be found again. It is always a bad sign when half the people are walking down the hill, skis and snowboards in hand. The rest of us were inching along, trying to keep our bearings straight.

Finally, finally we made it back to the bottom of the lift. A run that should have taken 7-8 minutes took well over an hour to get down. We both looked at each other and were thinking the exact same thing... Let's get a drink!! The gal at the information booth told us that the conditions were "extraordinary". You could say that again! We had survived our death-defying run and were just happy to be going home in one piece. It certainly was an extraordinary day.