One of the things that helped me through my recovery was the determination to get to do another ski season and where better for us to go than St Anton in Austria where my brother had lived for about a dozen years and my sister had enjoyed a season too. The resort is huge and the big attraction to the place is the huge amount of off piste available.
We arrived at the resort about 10 days before Christmas and I have to admit I was incredibly excited as we drove in especially as the resort was covered in a blanket of snow. This meant that we were able to get straight up the mountain and onto the slopes the first morning we woke up…it was absolutely amazing to be snowboarding again!!!
It took a little while to get our snowboarding legs back but once we did we went on an avalanche training course (thanks mum) which meant we could explore more of the mountain’s off piste options more safely. It was definitely a great experience enjoying some more adventurous snow boarding. We both had a fantastic time and got to enjoy plenty of powder days and while the snow in the village did melt away a couple of times we did get plenty of snow and in fact when our season came to an end in March our last day on the mountain was enjoying fresh snow!!
It has to be said though that on average temperatures were about 10 degrees Celsius higher than average. This meant that a lot of days the temp was getting just above freezing which obviously caused the snow to melt and in fact we stopped taking our extra layers up on the mountain, I can’t remember skiing in such consistently warm conditions. Still looking at the positives we got plenty of snowboarding in and I can proudly say that I managed to do over 1 million vertical feet of downhill snowboarding.
Most mornings found us up and waiting in line for the first lifts up the mountain, boarding almost all day before coming home in the afternoon. This obviously was quite exhausting and left us with little energy to do much afterwards. To be fair it would be pretty dark and cold too so not a whole lot on offer to do. That is apart from apres ski!!! St Anton certainly boasts some of the most lively après ski to be found in the world!!
While we enjoyed a few sessions we didn’t want to get too carried away by doing it every day plus while I was allowed to have a drink again I was a little conscious of not over doing it too much while still on my meds (turns out later I probably wasn’t as restrained as I should have been!!). So we decided to take up some more wholesome hobbies and Sarah picked up a keyboard and got stuck into re learning the piano. I, in a similar vein, bought a guitar and using an online learning platform called Justinguitar learnt how to play the guitar. I have to admit I probably should have done it a lot earlier as it’s definitely something I absolutely love doing and think I will continue.
Another definite highlight was an O’Keeffe family holiday that we got to go on in Val d’Isere in France where we all stayed in an amazing chalet and everyone got to enjoy some fantastic skiing. Again we had loads of snow which was awesome and the best bit of the holiday was skiing with everyone on a beautiful bluebird day!!
We were also lucky to be visited by Greg a great friend of mine who we enjoyed showing around the mountain and Nathan and Tara two great friends from the Sunshine Coast who stopped in for a quick snowboard while on a long holiday through Switzerland and Austria.
All in all it was truly amazing to be able to experience a ski season and has once again whetted our appetites for more. Particularly the fact that we have both got a lot better (and fitter) and are keen to get some split boards in order to begin enjoying some ski touring.
Already very much looking forward to next snow season!!! T