Study abroad journals

Snowboarding In The French Alps

So I woke up early this morning for another Saturday of snowboarding (or as the French say, faire du surf). It was a beautiful day up at the mountain! I've figured out that there are such a variety of mountains here in a number of different ranges, so it's almost always possible to get good weather at least one resort every day. The hard part is knowing which resort has the sun, and today, we definitely found it!

We went to Alpe D'Huez today, which is one of the big resorts in the area. It's lowest base is at 1350 meters, and it's highest "piste" is 3330 meters high! For all you yankees, that's 10925 feet, which is about the height of Mt. Baker! So today, we took the lift as high as it would go (the real summit was closed, but we took at gondola to 3060 meters) and snowboarded all the way down. A man on the gondola told us that the run (piste) was 15 kilometres, the longest in the world! It definitely took us awhile to get down it...maybe because I stopped to take so many pictures of the beauty! It's hard for me to snowboard here in the Alps...I'm always looking up towards the mountains because they are SO spectacular, so I don't pay much attention to the run!

The ski resorts here are so different than the ones in the States or Canada. They are all above the tree line, and skiing without trees is taking some getting used to. Also, there are no powder runs - everything is either groomed or overrun by the millions of skiiers - and NO one goes out of bounds or off of the run. I think this is because the areas are so high, and therefore more dangerous and prone to avalanches.

It's insane how high they put these lifts. They must think that we North Americans are crazy for keeping our ski areas so low. The view that you get is like one you would get after climbing a big mountain...only here I just have to take up a gondola! Check out the rest of my pictures to see the mountains...I wish ya'll could see what they really look like cause the pictures don't do God's creation much justice.

Jenny A,
Trinity Western University
British Colombia

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