A few months ago I was lucky enough to head overseas for the Burton Winter Sales meeting in St Anton, Austria. I had traveled to London and Ireland, but I had never been riding in the Alps before and I was literally dying with excitement after hearing absolute glory stories from anyone who has ridden there! After almost a day of travel, 1 crazy night in Munich and intense Jetlag setting in we finally arrived at our hotel in St. Anton where we were greeted with a 2 oz shot of schnapps to get everyone going (Note: this is not the yummy, tasty American Schnapps we all know…This is the blackout variety that tastes a bit like peach rubbing alcohol)  I quickly learned that this was definitely not the last  shot of the weekend, Austrians LOVE their schnapps!! We also arrived to a dry mountain with patches of the white stuff (see photo Below) This was absolutely heartbreaking to our dreams of European pow! However Burton never disappoints and they had already arranged for a bus to take us up to the Solden glacier the next day!

We woke up the next morning to snow mixed with a bit of rain….Eager to shred, we hopped on the bus to Solden where a foot of fresh and a fleet of W13 boards were waiting for us. It was the absolute perfect kick off to meetings. One of the coolest things about European resorts is there attention to luxury. Most chairlifts have bubble domes (see below) to keep the wind out and some of them have conveyor belts that move you from the line to the chair...It's crazy! 

It was an awesome day , ear to ear smiles all day long ..

The next few days were filled with meetings and late night parties. St Anton has a bar with bowling, darts, pool, air hockey and dancing...What more do you want??? The energy is pretty high when you get a crew of amazing  like minded people together in a far off place for a few days, not to mention bars are open late.. . But more importantly did I mention that it had not stopped snowing since we arrived on Sunday???Burton has some serious snow karma going on and St. Anton was completely covered in the white stuff by Wednesday , so they decided to open on Thursday morning and we were lucky enough to have the full day to shred!  It was pretty unbelievable to see the mountain transform into something ride able in just a few days.

Bluebird Skies and Pow :)

The crew and some beauty Mountain shots.

My first time riding in the Alps was a complete success, the terrain is so fun and there are so many good turns to be had in the trees and on the sides of runs, as most Europeans tend to stick "on piste". This trip has definitely left me with an urge to do more destination riding , there are so many amazing places to visit and mountains to explore. I think I just added a few new countries and mountains to my bucket list......and that list is getting long.