Meat Mountain/Snowboarding

Well, for a planned “relaxing weekend,” I feel far from relaxed this Monday! I woke up Friday to my first Switzerland snow and it was absolutely beautiful around here. It snowed all day long and we went sledding mid-afternoon but all in all I hung around the villa/apartment most of the day. After dinner a lot of us met at my apartment and then headed to a little place named ‘Bar Ticino’ for the night…nothing too exciting.

Saturday we slept in (for the first time since I have been here) and it was so nice! I woke up around 11 and we all started to prepare for our hike. Just to be clear, this was not approached as a typical hike. It entailed a 20 min steep incline with heavy, drink-filled backpack until we got to a park that has been designated by past Riva semesters as “Meat Mountain.” About 12 of us headed up after lunch and set up camp in the snow-covered park. There were all sorts of tables to play beer pong and other various games and the best part was the zip-line from one section of the area to the other (both pictured above). We stayed on Meat Mountain until around 4 and then headed back towards the villa for dinner. After drinking all day and eating a big dinner I was pooped and ready to hit the sack around 10, which worked out well because I had an early day planned on Sunday.

Sunday morning 6 of us woke up at 6:50 to get dressed and ready for our day of snowboarding. We took the 7:15 train from Riva to Belinzona and then a bus from Belinzona to San Bernardino, the ski resort. It took a little over an hour and a half to get there and the train ticket (inclusive of our lift ticket for the day) was only $46.00! We were dropped off close to a sports store where we got our rentals (only $40), 3 of us snowboarded and the other 3 skied. After we were fitted, we wandered around the little town trying to find ski lodge which was pretty difficult due to the serious serious language barrier going on. Everyone spoke German and only a little bit of Italian so with our broken Italian, it was tough to figure out directions. We finally found it, got our lift tickets and stared petrified at the 10 min gondola ride we had to take to the ACTUAL ski resort on the side of the mountain. It was definitely a great view on the way up but a bit unnerving. We got out of the gondola and found our way to the ‘bambino’ slopes, which was only about a 25 yard slope with a small incline and a carrot lift at the bottom. I don’t know how it works at big ski places in the US, but I have never once seen these terrifying carrot lifts. We waited in line to head back up the slope and proceeded to make absolute fools of ourselves on this thing. It was just a rotating line with prongs every couple of feet that you grabbed on to and stood on your board as it pulled you up the hill. Of course, we were very bad at figuring this out. At one point I was face down with only one glove since my other got caught in one of the prongs and taken away up the mountain. They had to stop the machine while I wobbled up to my glove and tried to hold on the rest of the way…pretty embarrassing.

We stayed on the little kid slope for only two runs to try and get our bearings and then figured we were ready for the blue level slopes…the next in difficulty the resort had. We jumped on the one actual chair lift in the park and headed over a hill, where we thought we would find the end of the lift. WRONG. We seriously went to the top of a mountain. I am not kidding people, we were at the peaks! It took 15 minutes to get to the top on the lift. At the top, the 4 of us that went got off and had a collective panic attack. The wind was whipping so hard at that altitude we could barely even hear each other talk. After convincing ourselves we were either dying at the top of the mountain or dying on the way down, we decided to charge. It was terrifying and probably the equivalent of a black diamond or higher in the states. We were super excited when we got down and much more confident in our ability to conquer the rest of the hills so we headed up a few more times and even tried a few others. I am not the best snowboarder and have not gone for about 3 years now, so it goes without saying that I fell A LOT, making me super sore today (no broken bones though!!). It was absolutely worth it though, not too many people get to say they have boarded the Swiss Alps!