Well, I went back to Flumserberg today.

I really wasn’t sure if I was going to go or not; I had no plans with anybody, and a little advertisement on Facebook didn’t come up with any hits. But in the end, I decided that I need to practice, and the weather was great, so I grabbed a book for the train and headed off.

As fortune would have it, Nick and Megan were on their way over as well, and sat just one car behind me. We met when we switched trains, then took the gondola up from Unterterzen together. There we parted ways for the morning, while they met some other friends and I skied some of the more aggressive pistes at the top.

These “aggressive” pistes were two of the very few black pistes on this mountain, and weren’t yet open when I was there two weeks ago. With an average of about 20cm powder everywhere, it was very hard in one sense; turning was difficult. In another, though, it was very easy to keep speed down, and there was no sense of fear; falling in powder doesn’t hurt at all.

I had some good fun there, but once was enough, and so I headed across the mountain. After lunch with the Deloitters, where I also bumped into Nathan and Claire, we headed up and down the mountain as a group. I worked on my form a bit and just hung out with the others, sometimes going with the less advanced people and sometimes pushing it a bit more with the more experienced folks. At one point, Nathan and I hit some pretty deep powder on an almost vertical incline as we went looking for a piste that was on the map but not marked anywhere (guess that’s a bit like following your GPS off the road because it says turn left here, eh?). Good times all around.

By the end of the day it got dark and cloudy, and let’s face it – this time of year, you can’t really hope for any sunshine past 16.00 anyway. So we bounced back to the gondola, got in line, and made it down just in time for the 16.58 train back.

Now I need to start planning Christmas weekend’s destinations…