Category: January 2010

Life never gets boring;-)… I enjoy being out in the mountains, skiing and the free time… In a few weeks I will be back at school, studying – so I’m soaking up everything right now because then it’s gonna be quite challenging… Studying, filming, shooting, training… Well, as I said – Life never gets boring;-)

…checked the snow depths yesterday evening, in the “Tiroler Unterland” it had up to 15 cm fresh powder:-) Well, that’s A LOT, especially when you are used to 1 or 2 cm’s new snow;-) Called Pia and we decided to go skiing at our “homespot” in Hochfügen. It’s a Winterwonderland, you have SOOOOO many opportunities for skiing!!

We were quite surprised that the conditions were soooo good:-) The weather forecast didn’t say snow for Zillertal… Skied in pow today:-) Hiked quite a bit and had some fantastic runs… The base is still, well let’s say at some parts rocky, but good… Of course I caught some rocks;-) but my skis are used to that…

After a great day with Pia, Fabi and Ü I drove back to Innsbruck – I had one hour to change, eat, shower, check some things before I had to be at physiotherapy… We were working on Mobilisation, bending my knee as I’m handicaped on my operated knee – not able to flex it 100%… I’m at around 80%, so jumping off big cliffs is a NO-Go, I don’t need another knee surgery – FIVE are enough!!!  Quite a painful session today but it should be fine tomorrow again 🙂

Have a good night 🙂

Mel:-)

…back from Serfaus – having had a great ski day with Dani and Anja, made a short stop in Ibk and drove home-home to Osttirol…

Monday morning, the weather wasn’t looking that good but I still wanted to go skiing. Luckily the weather turned out to be much better than expected – called Lupo and met him and his snowboard-buddy at the bottom station of the cable-car in St. Jakob…

We went off-piste and I was really surprised how good the snow still was. It hasn’t snowed for quite a long time, actually the last snowfall was on the 23rd December!!! And therefor the snow is still awesome!!!! Especially if you hike a little you can still ski powder!!! That’s the cool thing about Osttirol, not sooooo fast tracked out as everywhere else…

Wow, those guys rock 🙂 Lupo and Bernie the two locals, former professional snowboarders – they are CRAZY 😉 The work in the local Sportshop and have 3 hours lunchbreak everyday… In that time they alway go out snowboarding… Had a lot of fun with them in the snow… Vollgas all the time… They showed me around in the area and pointed out some really cool faces to ski…

Back in Innsbruck since yesterday evening, climbing session today, skiing tomorrow again;-) Life is good 🙂

…Thursday & Friday were training, chilling and organizing days – not on snow for those days… I feel that I’m not twenty any more;-) after some tough off-piste skiing days with jumping, bumps, etc., my knee sometimes needs a day off and therefore I sit on the bike or go climbing for a change… 

…went climbing on thursday with Toni, had a lot of fun – oh man, first climbing session since September, my feet were feeling good but I could definetely feel my arms;-) Good workout:-) and always a lot of fun to do sports with friends:-)

It was soooooo cool because the best climbers had training in the Tivoli climbing hall and it’s really impressive to watch Kili, Anna, Angie, Johanna and Co climbing!!! AWESOME!!!! Those guys rock!!!

Friday afternoon I met Dani for a short skitour… She had school until 1.30 p.m., I was supposed to pick her up at 3 p.m. but I got a call from Kerstin to pick up Oli’s favourite toy: his I-phone;-)… So it was 3.30 p.m. till I got to Dani, we went up to the Hungerburg-cable-car, unloaded, I put on my skiboots, it was right before 4 p.m. and then suddenly Dani said… Well, we can get up on the mountain but there is not enough snow to ski down;-) Instead of asking if the cable-car would run longer on this day we decided to drive to Oberperfuss and hike up there… Until we reached the snow it was 5 p.m.;-) Sooooo funny;-) 1h hike up the mountain, skied down, had to go to Völs to meet Romy… Drove to St. Anton for the Warren Miller Premiere “Dynasty”… Met my skibuddy/teammate Lori and a lot of other cool people… So cooool to be back in St. Anton!!! Love it there:-) The people, the flair, the mountains – EVERYTHING:-)

After the skifilm which was really cool (loved the part with Alexis Roland, 9 year old snowboard-pro sponsored by Burton…) we drove back to Ibk… Actually it was planned to go to Osttirol for the weekend but Arlberg was greeting, so I was looking forward to ski on the Arlberg with my skibuddies Lori, Björn and Katl:-)

What a beautiful day!!!! 🙂 Got up in the morning on Saturday, while driving to the Arlberg from Ibk, I just thought – it’s sooooo great to be alive and being able to enjoy the mountains… Blue sky, skiing, being out with friends – what do u want more?

It was a great day out on the playground Arlberg, sooo much fun with the girls, Björn left us after the second run because he had new ski boots that didn’t fit him perfectly, so he had to fix that… Lori know’s the terrain very, very well, so we found still some good pow-turns, challenging runs, coloirs, jumps, everthing 🙂 Was a awesome day!!!!

Today, Sunday skiing with my snowboard buddy and friend Dani, who is now becomig a skipro;-) and another friend of her – Anja… We went to Serfaus… I was amazed of that great terrain, the awesome infrastructure for the people skiing there… Wow, just amazing!!! The lifts, just everything – perfect!!! The ideal ski-area for everyone – perfect for kids… They just need more snow…

http://www.serfaus-fiss-ladis.at

We had a fun day, enjoying skiing, some pow-turns, photo-session, chilling and jumping some kickers in the park:-)

More pix to come as soon as Dani forwards them to me….

What a day!!! Skiing with Fredi and Tini in Kühtai today. Another day of blue sky and sunshine 🙂

I took my “toothpic-skis” with me today because I didn’t expect that we would go off-piste today, or at least doing something big… The first few runs we enjoyed skiing at the freshly-groomed slopes, some good warm up turns, having fun on the slope… But after a while we went off-piste and this is where I said to myself: ALWAYS take your pow-skis with u;-) It’s much more fun to ski on them!!!! My all-mountain ski is 178 cm, the pow-ski is 193 cm, a bit of a difference;-) I just love my Girish-Ski!!! It’s just AWESOME!!!! You can go MUCH faster on the freeride-skis and being a Freeride it’s your mission to ski everything with the fat skis;-)

Fredi had his camera with him, we took some shots and it’s just amazing how the pix turned out because the snow was not the best;-) But a good skier is able to ski on everything with everything;-)

Sandy invited me to join the photographer of Planet Snow and another photographer – Lars Schneider from Outdoor Vision… Of course I didn’t say no;-) http://www.outdoor-visions.com/

Started out at 8.30 a.m., met the crew, Michi and Lars the two photographers, Sandy and Jobst the skiers…

When I was driving into the Chillatal I already knew that the weather wouldn’t change that we would have sunshine and blue sky… Well, you can’t change the weather, it’s just about how you look at it;-) But for a fotoshooting it’s definetely best if you have a good light, powder and blue sky…

We were quite unlucky, hiking for about 40 minutes up the mountain, windy, cold, not the best visibility… Started out to shoot in a couloir – waiting for the sun, waiting and waiting and waiting… But the sun didn’t come out anymore… So we still shooted, one powder-turn with let’s say some pow but not that much… I had to hike up for another one… In the meantime Jobst did his turn in another couloir, icy, hard conditions, so not the best shot… Sandy – jumping off a cliff… Just when we were finished with the first shots, the sun came out for a couple of minutes… That was it – the sunshine for the day;-)…

Standing around a lot for some pow-turns, waiting and waiting, without a good light you can forget it… Well, bad luck… Did some more shots going down one face, am curious if at least some of them turned out okay…

Photoshooting on the mountain = hard work for both – athlete and photographer… Especially when it’s cold and windy outside… But other people sit in the office in front of the computer – I’m a lucky girl who is able to ski and be outside – jippiiii 🙂

Standing around a lot, having a cold knee, not good… Had to less warming up in the morning, hiking didn’t really help and now I can really feel that skiing is a very tough sport for the knees…

All in all it was another great day in the mountains 🙂 It was not the most productive day with pix but it was fun 🙂

I was toooo lazy and also tooo cold to take pix by myself;-) But some pix should be coming soon;-) Waiting until Lars and Michi send the pix to me…

…here they are – some of them – you can find the skipix in the skigallery, I will post the hiking pix here:-)…