Ljubljana

We visited the Slovenian capital Ljubljana this weekend, and loved it. It had a real nice 'vibe' to it. Architecturally beautiful and classically European with lots of trendy young people hanging out in cafes.

View from the top

We took a cablecar to the top of the Untersberg (1800m) today. Well, it was a pretty amazing view! This picture is down towards our town, Hallein (in the centre of the shot). Extremely green for middle of winter and it doesn't look like that will change any time soon. A real shame as there is a ski piste from the top which goes all the way back down to the valley: 1500m of vertical. Nice if there was enough snow!

More Skiing

Katie carving in Werfenweng. She's getting pretty good!

Wobbly phone

More visitors, more skiing, awesome!

Dirty ol' Essex popped over first for a few days of carving before Al turned up for a long weekend.

Obviously it was all quite gnarly, phat, and that new word that has entered youth-related parlance "wobbly phone" (origins of which derive from an Irish interpretation of the phrase and hand symbol, "Hang Loose")

Found some nice pockets of powder too and a fairly sweet little rock to jump off.

Good times, despite the early morning starts...

Huberbaum

The Huberbaum is a little boy who lives underneath the snowy Austrian Pistes and reaches up and tries to grab you when you ski past. Whenever you crash, the Huberbaum managed to get you.

Well, we found the Huberbaum a few times this weekend whilst out skiing, but had an absolute blast. Saturday we went to Rauris where it blew a gale and the lifts all closed by 2pm, but we still got some nice lines in and had fun.

Sunday was the best day of the season so far. Heaps of new snow in Bad Hofgastein and we were cruising around with a posse of 15 for some of the day: Katie, all my cousins, plus their kids, Mum and Dad, Mike and Grainne plus the lone snowboarder Wade.

In the afternoon me, Mike, Wade and my 10 year old cousin Christoph (an unbelievable skier) went powder hunting and found tonnes of it, including this wicked 6-8 foot rock drop. Mike was the guinea pig, I followed (see picture) and then Christoph! He totally nailed it. It was very impressive to see such a little man do something like that, especially because we didn't really expect him to do it.

Wahnsinn!