Switzerland Snowboard Adventure Part I

4/10/18

The First Days of Saas Fee

I had seen and heard of the fun times in Switzerland all throughout the winter last year. The powder, the people, the adventures, The Alps. My roommate Aaron Hooper had spent many seasons in Sass Fee over the past decade and a half snowboarding and making movies. While watching his films together he would drop the inside stories behind most of the shots and funny moments that he had captured in Sass Fee, just like a live director's cut. This was all a picture of a dream too far away for me to imagine. It wasn't until the end of the season in April that a trip like that would become reality for me.

The Dorfblick before a powder day

On a last minute notice I booked my flight and was off two weeks later. I left the day after the the Red Bull Homerun race and after a four hour car ride, two flights, two trains, and a bus ride I pulled into the old village of Sass Fee. Grizzled and strung out from the hours of travel I met up with Aaron and George Carpenter who brought me straight to the Dorfblick, an old family home turned vacation rental apartment owned and run by Bjorn and Debbie Klabermatten. Bjorn is the brother of legend snowboarder Fredi Klabermatten and the Dorfblick is their family home where they both grew up. At the Dorfblick we were graciously asked to crash a family style real swiss raclette dinner. Bjorn was the cheese chef that night and scraped everyone their slice of raclette off the steaming wheel of cheese. He didn't eat himself until everyone had gotten plenty themselves. We ate with a big group of Swedish kids that had been staying at the Dorfblick all winter and had come to work in Sass Fee for the season. Their season was coming to a wrap and this happened to be their going away dinner before they traveled home.

During the first week we posted up in the back room of Leifstyle Race Service, a tune shop that Aaron's buddy Leif Achermann owned. Equipped with our camping gear for sleeping and a hot plate for eating we had everything we needed for our stay. Although a skier, Leif was the man. As soon as I unpacked my snowboard bag Leif immediately had my board up on the benches inspecting it before he gave it a full on stone grind. Our time at Leif's consisted of sleeping, eating, and playing Dominoes. If you didn't know Dominoes is the perfect way to quench the stoke from a long day of riding.

Dominoes at Leif's with George and Fabye

The first five days of my trip were the last five days the resort of Sass Fee was open. Those first couple days were filled with nothing but powder. Each day on the mountain a crew of rippers seemed to form around us out of nowhere. The squad consisted of myself, Aaron, George, and about four other Swiss homies. We lapped the same stashes run after run that lay "off piste" in between each designated ski run. The majority of skiers on the resort stuck to the narrow groomed inbound runs and never ventured off the side trails into the powder. More snow for the pow starved Americans and company I guess. After a couple cloudy days the sky broke into pure blue. What followed was the deepest bluebird pow day I've ever lived to see. It's what still keeps me dreaming at night.

After the mountain had its final day they finished the season off in a town wide closing party. The narrow streets of town were crammed with people from all over Europe. One group of german girls had been on a trip trying to hit as many closing parties as they could through the Alps. Music blasted from everywhere playing absurd songs that the crowd yelled along to. Songs that had part english and part german and repeated lines like "Johnny Deep! Johnny Johnny Deep Deep!" The music was strange and the people were wild. I felt like I was in a different country.

Closing Party Chaos

The day after the mountain closed winter ended. The chilly mornings disappeared and the temps got hot. With the warm sunny weather crevasses would be opening and ice shelfs would be prone to collapsing. Our plans to splitboard around the mountain were squashed. But when one door closes another window opens. For the next week we set out for an all out street mission. Read about it in Part II .