After 2 hard weeks of work in Amsterdam, I'm ready for a vacation!
Ha. Actually I had signed up for this McNab Snowboarding course back in November, when I had heard that there were only a few places left, and when I had thought I would be arriving in Amsterdam on January 9 (instead of 6 weeks later, due to working permit snafus). It's a week-long course held in Chamonix, with the same outfit who runs the freestyle camp I took 2 years ago in Les Deux Alpes.
Anyway, lugged my board bag & backpack a few blocks to Central Station, then hopped a train to Schipol airport. Wow, the train station is directly underneath Schipol. You get off the train and go up the escalator and hello!, you're right there in the terminal already.
It's a mere one hour flight to Geneva but it is at least an hour before I get out of customs and find my shuttle driver. Then we wait another 1.5 hours for other passengers to arrive and drive an hour to the motel. Hmm...perhaps I should have taken the train direct!
Arrived too late to really see the town or mountains, but just in time for dinner. I meet 3 other McNabbers.
Dick is a game warden and married, but one of his relationship quirks is that he and his wife never take vacations together. Apparently, they get along better that way. He's taking the Backcountry Freeride course, which is considered level 2, the course you would take if you survived Intro to Backcountry, which is what I am signed up for.
Joe is in Cham for the entire season, honing his skillz. I am jealous. I would almost certainly have been doing the same thing in Tahoe, if I hadn't decided to go to Amsterdam instead. Then again, if that were the case, I wouldn't be experiencing Cham in all its glam and glory. We find out that we'll be in the Intro course together.
Kat is my roommate for the week and a journalist with a ski and snowboard magazine in the UK. She was there to write an article about her course, the Technical Clinic. So that means that her course is paid by the magazine. I also find out later that all of gear and clothes are on loan to her from various snowboarding companies. Nice life!
After dinner, we separate by course and meet the people we are going to be snowboarding with for the next 5 days. There are only 5 other people in my group and they are all very fit-looking guys. Everyone has at least some of their own gear already, except for me. I am a bit nervous about this. Hey I thought it was an intro class! We agree to meet in the lobby at 8:45am, and everyone goes off right to bed. I can already tell that this is going to be nothing like the easygoing freestyle camp.
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hello, glad to come across this blog!
ReplyDeleteI am an avid snowboarder (used to do 100+ days per season but now around 40-50 days) and is considering relocating to Amsterdam for work, but I'm worried about the shred situation. What are your experience and thoughts on this? Looks like most good mountains you have to fly or train to, do you always take long vacation time for these trips? I see that there are some indoor places around Amsterdam to get my fix if needed, but seems like all these travelling will get pretty pricey...
Hi Sam,
DeleteDo it! I had reservations about going, but I never regretted the experience, and I almost certainly would have regretted not going. You can always come back after all.
Yes, it's definitely a long drive to get to the mountains, but flying out of Amsterdam is actually very convenient. And the experience of riding in Europe is unique. It's kind of a shame that I didn't keep up the blog, because I actually did do a lot of boarding in Europe that I never posted about. Zermatt, St. Anton, and Les Arcs are all amazing. Those were week-long trips. We did Porte-Puymorens and this great indoor place near Maastrict (much better than the places near Amsterdam) over a few long weekends. Traveling was pricey for sure, especially if you go for English chalet-type accomodations (something you should try at least once, since we don't have this tradition in the US - tea and cake every day at 4pm, when you get off the mountain!) Hopefully, you get the 20% ruling in Amsterdam, to save you some money for riding. Sometimes I wish I still lived in Europe, because there were some places I really wanted to check out, like La Grave and Verbier, not to mention midnight riding in Norway, but I never got there. Oh, and if you ever get to St. Anton, you MUST go to Moosewirt and you MUST do the toboggan ride to Rodel Alm. I have a detailed post about that on TripAdvisor under the name "nlgenxer".
Happy riding!