"Don't you just fuckin' hate snowboarders sometimes?"
This was said to me recently. And it didn't come from an old-school skier, nor a snow-hating curmudgeon like Patty.... It was a friend of mine who not only rides but is one of the most committed around, having devoted the best part of his life to coaching the sport. After spending last season in Meribel with the Jack Wills brigade, I was inclined to agree. A look at a random sample of people who snowboard (or say they do) could probably be summed up by that Chewin' The Fat sketch: "wank, wank, wank, good guy, wank".
I'm generalising of course, but if you agree and are ever looking for somewhere to escape all the bullshit that becomes ever more associated with our sport, then look no further than Bormio. In this corner of Italy, the sight of someone on a board is a rare thing, and those you do see aren't prone to any posturing.
I'm generalising of course, but if you agree and are ever looking for somewhere to escape all the bullshit that becomes ever more associated with our sport, then look no further than Bormio. In this corner of Italy, the sight of someone on a board is a rare thing, and those you do see aren't prone to any posturing.
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| Spot the boarder |
So why so few of us? It's probably got something to do with the atrocious beginner's area, which has probably prevented any locals from ever getting past the falling leaf. From the vantage point of the chairlift that passes directly overhead, you find yourself watching the lessons from behind your fingers, horror-movie style. There's a massive crash every 2 minutes, without fail. As bad as the layout is, though, it's genuinely the only place where someone could even attempt to pick up the basics: the rest of the hill is pretty steep, with almost all the runs either classified as red or black. The only bits that aren't are the occasional narrow, tree-lined cat-tracks,which link the steeps together.
So the learners are pretty screwed, but for the rest of us it's all wide motorway piste which, depite the steep gradients, NEVER get moguls. Burning around a place like this with barely another soul around, every day in the sun, is not something that gets old.
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| Kyla hoons it down. Look closely for the ONE other guy on the piste with us |
It's not just the runs that are quality: despite almost zero interest in freestyle from the locals (no tall-teed skiers either), someone had gone to all the bother of building a pretty good terrain park: on the left, a two-kicker line with two sizes of jump; on the right, beginner jumps and boxes and a (still unfinished) halfipe. Then it's down to a choice of battleship rail or two different barrel taps, then rainbow box and a wallride to finish.
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| Top jumps.... |
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| ...bottom jumps... |
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| ...and the rest. |
It's like a private park. In the whole time we were there, no-one else even went near the bigger line, with only a couple of the flamboyantly-uniformed instructors even braving the smallest of the four booters. After five days of lapping with no queues, it was an almighty pisser to see everything closed off due to high winds on the last day, focing us to scrap our filming plans:
So here's the only park footage from the week:
That's enough for now, but there's so much more to love about Bormio. Driving past houses where horses live on the bottom floor, à la Borat; paying €1.50 for a coffee in the highest mountain restaurant; marvelling at the occasional Italian 'Berlusconi tan' and plastic surgery disaster, and much, much more. Sadly we missed the incident that would have been the icing on the cake: early one morning, a bull came stoming through the main ski area in a mad rage. While the skiers could push away with their poles, one boarder apparently had to unstrap and use his stick as a shield until the local farmers arrived with pitchforks and chased it away. Maybe that's why the locals don't snowboard.... Don't let that put any of you riders off a trip though: even if you end up being gored by a rampaging beast, a week in Bormio's well worth it.
