A "TUGA" in the Snow

3/03/2007

Today is Saturday and at 7o Clock I arrived to the Formigal after 11 fatidic hours in the van! There isn't a lot of snow. To be more precise there is very few snow in the nearest mountains because incredibly as it sounds, it has only snowed one time in this winter..... And that is the snow that still remains in the mountains.

Formigal:

I went to an higher place in the mountains and I was shocked with the few snow that there is on the tracks....

4/03/2007

Today was a nice sunny day and I surfed a lot to kill the "saudades" I had for the snowboarding, the snow and all this beautiful landscape.

5/03/2007

Today it was again a nice sunny day and I surfed with another rented board because, I didn't said before, but i couldn't take my board on the trip, because I hadn't enough space in the Van!! So yesterday I rented a board and today I rented another one for the next days.

6/03/2007

Today is Tuesday and I'm in the Pirinéus, more precisely in Formigal. I went to mountains in the middle of the morning to surf alone!

I did 5 tracks and then lunched in the coffee zone, where I found my mother with my nephew.

After lunch (13h) the so long waited snow started to fall!!! A cloudy day turned in a dense cloudy and very windy day with a lot of Snow falling!

I went surfing alone again, in the middle of the very welcome storm! I wasn't prepared for a snowing day (I didn't had nothing to protect my face or ears!!) but the cold windy snow cutting my face felt very good!! Because I know that now the tracks will be much better for the skiing tomorrow. The tracks became better along the afternoon and I skied a lot until it was 16:15. Sometimes the visibility was reduced to 10 meters but it was fun all the way.

Like I said before I was alone and so I did things, when I was in the "chairs" climbing the mountains, so I didn't fell all alone by myself. Those things were thinking in what I would write here and I rehearsed my songs (singing and everything!!!) because I really was almost alone in the mountain!

I was pleasant that I decided to not take the camera today because of the weather and so the pictures for today are here back home with my family!

Until now it's snowing and all the village is covered with white sheet.

7/03/2007

Today is Wednesday and I went to the mountains early in the morning, everything was white! :) The snow storm was getting bigger and bigger along the day!

In morning I went surfing alone I did only one track with my mother, repeated that track sometimes and passed to a bigger more challenging red one!

At lunch we were all wheat (only on the outside!!).

In the afternoon I went to another tracks alone, and for the first time I noticed that my coat was frozen!!!!

I got kinda lost in the middle of the storm when I started descending a blue track , the visibility was zero and there was so much powder snow that my board didn't moved! I tried to figure out were the track was and the cold wind was very very strong that I only remained still waiting for the storm to lose its force. And then after a while that seemed a lot, the visibility grew up and I started walking and then I putted the board on my foots and went down as always!

For the first time I saw a car accident in the snow.

And I found a good track (Glera, a blue one) that I did several times.

All this adventure day was done with nobody in the tracks what is a fabulous but it also kind of frightening.

8/03/2007

Today it was again a sunny day but the wind tried to break everything apart! Although the sun in the sky the weather have still signals of the storm. The very strong winds close the station until 10 (the station opens at 9 normally).

The amazing thing is that the people that disappeared on Tuesday appeared now again because of the sun, this people only ski with sun!!.... So the tracks were again with some people like maybe 30 persons descending the same track at a time.

When I did the first climb in the chairs to a red track, I saw a lot of people (skiers and snowboarders) doing off track! And so on my first descend I did also off track in a beautiful virgin powder snow. The first part went very well until I started to fall again and again ( I did a lot of quick front side flips in that snow!!!!!!!!!!, but I didn't got hurt). The thing is that I forgot a essential tip for skiing and surfing in powder snow, you must always put the force in the back, so in this case I had to put all the weigh of my body in the back foot (in ski one have to throw his weigh to back and not to the front as one always does in normal snow).

After that lesson, learned in the hard way!!! :) I did the red track and then the off track applying the technique described in the last paragraph and I didn't fall!

This was an incredible day, I risked a little bit more, doing off tracks and jumps in the afternoon. I met some Portuguese Snowboarders and did some tracks with them. At half past 3 (pm) the weather changes and the dense clouds appeared and finally in the 16h it started to snow again, of course with a lot of wind!

9/03/2007

The day started early at 7h! I took this photos:

This will unfortunately be my last day in the tracks for this year..

Every time I come to the snow I Know that I could spend here the all winter that I wouldn't be fed up. One of this days I will come to here, for good.

Today I went early to the tracks. I went with my mother and we did a lot of new tracks that opened today. There was a normal day with some clouds but after 13 the sky turned grey and it started raining. By that time we had done already 12 new tracks that were haw some. After that I went by myself to do the last tracks of the day and of this season... The rain destroyed a lot the snow that was starting to become all "wet" and made the board and the skies go slower down the track. As I did my last track and came away from the station I saw that the rain has removed a lot of snow from the mountains.

In the morning I took some beautiful pictures of the view from the top of the mountains and the view for the city Formigal:

10/03/07

The day of the return trip to home, Porto. It took 12hours to finally arrive at home. We saw a lot of beautiful Spanish villages, some of them completely abandoned.
The trip of course made me fell very tired and so it was a good night of sleep.