My name is Stuart Innes and this is the story of my friends and mine 2016/17 season. It will take the form of a diary including photos and mini snowboard video edits and I’ll update it whenever time and wifi allows. The plan is to travel round Europe in my car based out of Mayrhofen, Austria and try and snowboard as much as I can.
24/9/2016
It’s 9am and I’ve just woken up in the back of my Ford Focus in the woods outside Bispingen in Germany. Rob Wilkinson (a skier I know from the dryslope in Aberdeen) is in his tent a couple meters away. We started our trip in Aberdeen at 8am on Tuesday the 20th of September, driving to Newcastle and getting an overnight ferry to Amsterdam. After some navigational issues we were finally saved by my phone’s sat nav and soon we were on route for Bispingen for a week in a huge indoor snowdome with a chairlift and a better rail line than most mountain resorts.
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Hurtling down the motorway, we could only imagine the strange looks people must be giving us with two pairs of skis strapped to the roof in the summer. Other than a half hour section caught in a tail back travelling at about 3mph watching Shred Bots on the laptop out of one eye, the rest of the journey passed pretty quick and we got to the dome just in time for a quick shred. Much to our amazement the pristine park was empty and some of the features still had grooming lines. After the dome we headed to our hotel to get a well needed rest.
The next morning we woke up and set out to find somewhere to set up camp for rest of the week. Eventually we stumbled across a disused path about five minutes drive from the dome that led through a forest and decided to set up camp – Rob in his tent, me on my mattress in the folded down back seats of my parents’ old car.
By the time we had set up camp and stopped at the supermarket for food it was time to get to the dome, Rob who is still recovering from a minor shoulder injury decided to stay outside explore the area a bit more whilst I headed in to the once again deserted dome. We left the dome when it closed and headed back to our now pitch dark campsite. Friday proceeded in a much similar manner with the majority of the day spent lapping the world class rail line in the dome except this time with Rob donning his skis to film some clips for me. Friday evening finished with a trip to MacDonald’s to “pikey some free wifi” as Sam might say. Along with the usual spree of snowboard edits on my newsfeed I had a message from Whitelines asking about our trip and seeing if I’d like to do this little diary thing, of course I was stoked and said yes.
