From Budapest to the Dolomites!!

The crew I was to meet consisted in my friends JS Ratté from Vancouver, JF Marchand now living in Grenoble, JP Paiement from Montreal and Étienne Bernier right from Suriname. I met the three first one in Budapest at the airport and Étienne was arriving the following day.

After catching up with the boys at the airport, we made it up to Laukoauto from where we were to get our RV for the next weeks.

The RV is really cool and we certainly have a lot of room to put all the gear. We were all super excited about our ride for the next 2 weeks.

It is my first time travelling in such a luxurious ride, but it wasn't much expensive than renting 2 cars for the 5 of us. Since Étienne was landing a day after everyone, we had a night to spend in the Hungarian capital. After packing it and stopping to get some supply, we parked almost downtown Budapest and took off to celebrate our gathering.

We had some big plans for that night but after just few beers, we totally collapsed from the jetlag and made it back to the camper for our first night.

Étienne finally arrived as expected and we were able to finally take off towards a skiing destination.

After searching for the best option, and cross-checking all the information about the yearly snowfall and the latest accumulation, we settle our minds that the best destination possible was the Dolomites in the northeast of Italy.

After driving for 8 hours, we were not even close to our destination. We figured it would be a great plan to check out Kransjka Gora which is one of the best resorts in Slovenia. Kransjka got some really nice vertical but this season has been really bad for snow for this resort.

This small but steep resort is home of an FIS slalom event in the coming week, but we won't stick around to check it out. Anyway, it was cool to get some turns in Europe even if most of them was from an artificial source.

Another 6 hours drive later and we were…… stuck at Col Gallina. The chain we got with the RV weren't the good size for the tires we had. The tiny bit of snow on that rather steep pass forced us to camp.

Fortunately for us, they salted the road and we were able to make it to Arraba in the heart of the Dolomites where 140cm of snow has been reported in the last 7 days. After debating the best options around, we took off for a nearby tour to see the options available around!

The mountain range around here are really stunning and the skiing options are simply endless. The Dolomiti Superski features 450 ski lifts that interconnect valleys and towns limiting the skiing options to your imagination. Our imagination for that first tour was a bit limited, but the snow was really nice around Passo Campolongo.

We figured our best option was a nearby north face from Pordoi Pass. After some hard time just to get the camper out of the parking lot, we were finally able to make it up the pass at around noon….

The skin up went fairly smoothly and the turns we were able to get were certainly the best we had so far in the trip! 

We were able to get three runs in before the face we were on was totally tracked (at least to my standard!)

A nearby face is our plan for tomorrow and with the clear sky and the cold temperature, we are certainly looking at another great day of skiing tomorrow!

Arrivederci!
evans