‘Donde está…’ in Spanish means ‘where is…’ and is a question that comes up quite often on a road trip. We were travelling to the Pyrenees for ski touring and after ten days in Spain, everyone of our crew knew the ‘donde está…’ pretty well. Our crew was earlybird team riders Janine, Johanna and Simon, photographers Flo and Felix and organizer Hanno. Our base in the Pyrenees was Altron, a tiny old village in Catalonia.
Arriving there, it all started with ‘donde está la nieve?’. A pretty warm January raised the snow level to about 2000m and provided spring ski touring conditions for our trip. With support from Tavascan ski resort, we explored great terrain around the Pleta del Prat. One highlight was the ‘Canal diabolo’ that Janine and Johanna could climb up and ski down in perfect conditions for couloir skiing.
‘Donde esta el refugio?’ was another question, we asked ourselves on the three hours hike up the valley to the Refugio Saboredo. Definitely worth the long way, we realized as we saw all the possibilities for great skiing in the National Park in Val d’Aran. Surrounded by steep rocky mountain peaks, there are many lakes close to the hut. This scenery, complete loneliness for touring and the laid back Spanish people of the hut made a great ambiance. During three days staying up there, we had a lot of fun skiing different terrain. Simon found a steep line with a double cliff and a jump over a creek. On an old root, we had a great session doing some backcountry jumps. In a snowstorm the next day, we climbed up the ‘Canal de las novias’, a 55° steep couloir in great surrounding. Skiing down was more of a safety issue but the whole adventure made it one of the best runs of the trip.
Some more ‘donde está’ was used for car keys, when we showed our Spanish friends several times that earlybirds come rather late than never. But invitations for Swiss cheese fondue and outdoor as well as indoor barbeque brought European afterskiing culture closer together. So finally the answer for ‘donde está the stoke’ was clear to all of us that it can’t get any higher than in the Pyrenees.
Text: Johanna Bogner
Photography: Florian Hipp / Felix Blersch
To Johanna and our other athletes
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