Zermatt - Summer Snowboarding in the Swiss Alps!

Hey everyone!

I'm here to talk to you guys about Zermatt, Switzerland or what I like to call the Blue Mountain/Collingwood of Switzerland.....but 10 times better haha. This place is really nice! It's situated in a valley in the Swiss Alps where we're surrounded by huge mountains on all sides. We had to take a special train get up here, which cost 25 Swiss Francs for a one way ticket, which is pretty pricey, but TOTALLY worth it. Zermatt is a quaint moutain city in the south of Switzerland near the Swiss-Italian border. In fact, we were told that you could actually ski to Italy at the top of the mountain (Cervenia, Italy)! The city has a few shops, a few residential areas and some houses on the mountain side (some that look like bison!). Haha. In short, Zermatt is what you would expect from a place in the swiss alps, small, quiet and beautiful. Definitely a must see for those in the area! The biggest "attraction" here is the Matterhorn, which is a shark fin like mountain peak that reigns over the area like a boss that looks over your shoulder when you're trying to sleep at work.

Our first day consisted of just walking around town and buying a lot of souvenirs. Just ask Nathan and Bern how much heavier their packs were after Zermatt lol. If you're wondering, they in fact do have a McDonald's even up here in the mountains. The only problem is it's just as expensive as Bern. A Big Mac combo costs 12.60 Swiss Francs, which is almost the same in Canadian dollars...WTF?! we ended up eating a small sandwich shop where we ate rotiserie chicken or mozzarella sandwiches. They were pretty tasty, but I was starting to get tired of sandwiches :P.

Enough with the touristy stuff....let's get to the reason why we're even here in Zermatt. to SNOWBOARD!!! We rented all of our equipment the day before and ended up with some funky gear which made Bern look like a pylon, Nathan like a gay firefighter, Mikee like a ski instructor and me looking like Mikee. LOL (see picture). We planned to take the first cable car up to the peak of the Klein Matterhorn (small Matterhorn) at 6:15 in the morning and as many of you know, most of us (except Mikee) are not morning people, but we definitely are snowboarders so waking up wasn't a huge deal. In fact, we ended up waking up at around 4:15 AM to see the sunrise over the Matterhorn....GORGEOUS! We took a few pictures, then proceeded to put on all of our snowboarding gear. For me, the gear was kinda sticky from all the sweat from previous renters, but it didn't matter...we were going to snowboard on the Swiss Alps in the summer. Can we ask for anything cooler? Maybe for our significant others to be here to....or.......some super cars...Anyway, we took the cable car up the mountain, which took 45 minutes. It felt a lot less since we were surrounded by a valley city, green mountain sides, fluffly clouds, and mountain peaks covered with snow. We had to transfer to a separate gondola type cable car to get to the ski area, but once we got to the top, I was definitely excited and ready to go. Too bad Nate was taking FOREVER to put on his snowboard. C'mon nate, we don't have all day! Literally. Snowboarding only lasted from 7:00AM - 1:00PM because once the sun comes out, the snow starts to melt and soon becomes impossible to board. Let's go, let's go, let's go! Finally, we start down the mountain where the view was spectacular! The snow was a bit granular and icy, but it was super fast and fun. We took a few minutes to regain our boarding skillz and then proceeded further down the hill. We passed a couple of ski lifts, but decided to keep going down the mountain because mikee wanted to "get the full mountain experience". The runs aren't particularly difficult....probably a blue run at Blue Mountain at the worst, so it was nice casual snowboarding for the most part. This gave us the opportunity to soak up the view like a sponge <breathe in!>. At the bottom of the run was the melting snow, which created rivers that we had to board right over...NEAT! Totally a new and fun experience that many boarders should try. Few! We're done. Now let's do it again and again and again.

After the second run, Bern and Nate were pooped out, so they decided to sit the next run out. Mikee and I went down the mountain again, vying to go as fast as we could. By this time, it was around 11:30AM or so and the snow was SUPER soft...like melting slushies. It was terribly slow and really hard to make turns. Our legs were burning half way down the mountain, but we pushed through to the end. After that we went up to see Nate and Bern, where we had some excellent hot chocolate and some refreshing 12 Euro bottle of water....Lame! We went to the look out point where Nate fell asleep and Mikee and I had to take breaks as we went up the stairs. After some pictures, we decided to go for one final run...well everyone except Nate, who took the gondola back down to the first cable car. As Bern would put it, that was the best run yet! The snow was soft, but not as slow as the previous run. It was really good and I had a few crazy wipe outs, including one where i did a side roll and another where I literally bounced off the snow haha. It didn't hurt! SIIIICK!

So, Mikee kept changing his snowboard binding angles throughout the day in an effort to make the ride more comfortable . What this entails is that you need to flip up a latch, turn it to unlock, then pull out the binding and swivel to change the angle. I'm not exactly sure how many times he did this, but it was quite a lot. At first he changed it at the top of the hill, then he got more daring and changed it in the middle of our last run....big mistake Mr.Chan. He ended up bending a part of the binding latch system such that it wouldn't lock anymore...oops! You can't snowboard with out two feet strapped into your board...We tried furiously to put it back it, but to no avail. :( Mikee was stuck in the middle of the run with a broken snowboard. Poopie. Bern and I decided to go down the rest of the way to try and get someone to maybe drive a snowmobile and pick him up while mikee began his treck down the slope. At the bottom, we found Nate waiting for us and told him what happened. Then we found an Italian person who worked there and asked if he could go pick Mikee up on the hill. He didn't understand a word I said, so I had to use really stupid actions like "broke snowboard", "on mountain", "walking" "use snowmobile", "get him". He ended up laughing and saying no. Well, that was a waste of time! Mikee ended up at the bottom of the hill pretty quickly and tired, but ALIVE! Funny thing was...mikee ended up fixing his board on our way to the gondola...kind of. The bindings were facing opposite directions...oh well atleast it's on there, right? On the bright side, at least he didn't have to pay for any damages! SCORE!

Also, Nate lost his goggles on the hill. He initially lost the foam part of the goggles during our first run (which we found on the second run), but he needed goggles since it was too bright. I decided to lend him mine, since it wasn't that bright for me and I actually like snowboarding without goggles anyway. So I gave him mine and we went down the hill. Little did I know, Nate "threw" his goggles at me and I didn't notice, thus leaving the goggles on the slope for someone to cover it with snow as they went by. Sigh....at least the rental place didn't make us pay for it. :) Between me and you....they were really REALLY bad goggles anyway :P.

Once we were done snowboarding we went back down to Zermatt to grab some lunch/dinner (McDonalds) and walk the town a little more. We decided to go to the hostel common room and play some cards. We ended up meeting a guy from Houston who was going to work for BP (ya, I know! haha). We slept early again that day and then headed out to our next destination....VENICE!!!!

Pictures to come soon.

That's all for now!
Peace Outside,

Jamie Huynh