ECS 2006
Home Up Monte Bondone 2004 Tonale 2004 Whistler Worlds 2005 Krynica 2005-01-30 Turbacz 2005-02-26 Kasprowy 2005-03-12 Kasprowy 2005-03-23 Santa Caterina 2005 WWW 2005 South Africa 2005 Wipptal 2006 ECS 2006 Kaunertal 2006 ECS 2007

 

Extreme Carving Session in Zinal !!!

The ECS 2006 was really great. That was the most intense three days on a board in a long time. 

But first thing first. We started early Friday morning at Balice International Airport, with a solid breakfast. Nothing beats good scrambled egg on polish sausage...

We landed in Milan on Friday morning, had some trouble renting a car, but eventually managed to overcome all the problems and by 1pm were on our way. we got a semi-decent Smart ForFour. We did some shopping in Italy and managed to get some Prosciutto di Parma, some cool cheese and wine. Once in the car it turned out that i forgot to bring MS AutoRoute CD with, so we had navigation, with no navigation in it. Well, since I never really get completely lost (compare Turbacz 2005-02-26 trip) we decided to navigate from a petrol station to a petrol station, at each one looking at the road map and trying to figure out where we were. That was quite tricky, so at one of the gas stations we took a picture of a road map with a digital camera and used that for navigation...see for yourself:

We got there late Friday and managed to find our hostel without much problems. We were in a huge dorm, that probably sleeps close to 20 people. But it was quite OK. The place had a lot of climate. On the spot we had a beer or two, some prosciutto (mmmm...it just smells like.....)

We hit the town later on, to see if we could meet up with some carvers. Unfortunately, we met none. Or maybe fortunately, cause we'd probably would have had more than 2 beers....

Zinal is a great little village, right at the end of a long valley. Couple of pubs and hotels, and huge mountains. It just seems like the end of the world. 

The next day we rushed to the meeting point - turned out, that most of the snow in Zinal was blown away by gale force winds a couple of days ago, so the Swoard team decided to host the event in Grimentz, which is about 5km down the valley from Zinal. 

We had a couple of easy runs, just to warm up, before we swapped our boards for better and finally tested the might of a SWOARD.

What we did then is best seen on the video from the trip - Carve Hard or Die Trying.wmv  The riding was very intense. Probably the best ever carving. What we didn't realize before is how steep the slopes there are. The slopes on which we do extreme carving are definitely steep, solid black runs. Like this one:

Somehow it looks much steeper in reality. That evening was the official diner in restaurant on top of Zinal cable lift at 2500m altitude. That was a great opportunity to meet some of the people we got to know from the EC forum - fellow carvers. Each participant received a T-shirt and some stickers. Beer was plentiful and moods were definitely up. After returning to Zinal we went to get some more beers and headed home in rather loud manner. Some were louder - the Czech team, who managed to get pissed properly and they happened to live in the same place as we did...

 

The next two days were just carving during day and drinking at night - basically exactly what we do best :) ...no more comments required....

On the way back we decided to try Zermatt. Well, it turned out that the big resorts are not as cool as the small ones. The slopes were crowded, poorly groomed and everything was expensive.

We knew our way to Milan, so navigation was not a problem. We snoozed in the car and caught our flight the following morning. All in all, an excellent trip. We are most likely to be there for ECS'07.

 

bullet2005-01-09 10:37 Got a confirmation on accommodation. Still looking for a cheap car rental in Milan. Looks like Żuber might join us in the last minute.... been practicing extreme carving in Wipptal, so I might be ready in time for ECS2006 :-)) 
bullet2005-11-07 14:49 We already have the plane tickets. We are flying out on Friday the 10th of February, and returning on Wednesday, the 15th of February 2006. Flying to Milan and renting a car there. It's only a 3 hour drive to Zinal from Milan. So far there are 3 of us going: I, Patryk and Klepster. Should be grand. Just to stick with the tradition, here is the countdown:

 

 

This page was last updated on 07-12-2006 .