Saturday Afternoon and Attempted Survival

After allllll this, we began our day of skiing. Despite waking up at 6:30, we probably did not hit the slopes until close to 11:30. My first run was just amazing. I couldn’t help but stop and just say to Brooke, “my life is a joke.” How is it that I am here, skiing the Swiss Alps? My life is a giant vacation and I am beyond blessed. We slowly made our way down the mountain, stopping numerous times to shoot more pictures than our cameras can handle. (Don’t worry, I will post them all to Facebook even though they’re all of the same thing.)

Brooke and I were a little more confident in our skiing than the other girls, so when the boys miraculously spotted us from a chairlift, we decided it would be a good time to switch around our travel companions, Brooke and I heading of with Scotty and Sam, while Kubin joined the rest of our original group. Worst decision of our weekend, no offense to the boys. Brooke and I were doing just great, confident in our skiing, owning the greens and blues, and feeling high on life and light air. Oh no. Don’t worry, with these boys, survival was questionable.

We handled the beginning well. I tried to keep up, Brooke wiped out three or four times, but we were okay. Then, we got to a fork in the road and Sam decided to screw the fork, let’s make our own path down some fresh powder. About 10 feet deep. I followed hesitantly and made it down without incident. Scotty follwed. Brooke, however, had an epic wipe out. Just sliding down, losing a pole, laying in 10 feet of snow, and laughing at herself the whole time. We made it to the bottom, when to our dismay Brooke, terror in her eyes, informed us that she was missing her phone.

Goodbye, Blackberry. Hope you enjoy the Alps!

After a quick meeting to chastise Brooke for keeping her pockets open and to decide it was pretty hopeless, we made motions to try just once to retrace our steps. The boys would go back up the mountain and come back down, while we used my phone to call hers to see if someone would pick up. After the boys parted ways on their own search and rescue mission, I told Brooke it could be worse.

Me: Hey, it could be way worse.

Brooke: How??

Me: It could be your passport?
Brooke: silence.

Me: Right?

Brooke: Uh oh, that may have been in the same pocket.

Phone: gone. Passport: gone. Good time in Switzerland: well on its way out.

With a slight panic attack we weighed our options as we waited for the boys. We saw them on the top of the hill, beginning to work their way down to us, when Scotty wiped out. Sam pulled up to him. And as we watched, we heard the most miraculous sound.

“WE FOUND IT. Wait, AND your passport!”

Alas, both had been about 50 feet above us, right at the location where Scotty wiped out. Someone was looking down on us and laughing, teaching us all a lesson about keeping track of our stuff. Just a straight up miracle.

The situation went from enjoyable skiing, moment of terror, to utter joy. Thank goodness.

The rest of the afternoon was relatively uneventful: besides me getting stuck on a black run, losing both my poles and skis in the process, calling for help, having a German man ski my stuff down the hill for me, his 5 year old daughter skiing circles around me, and sliding down the rest of the mountain on my butt (thank goodness I rented snow pants.) But, beyond that, a great time!

We were exhausted by the time we made it back to the hostel. After grabbing a traditional Swiss dish of American pizza, we took a small nap, and rallied for the evening, celebrating our successful visit to our first European country as a group! What an amazing time, despite Kubin again acting as an alarm clock at 2 AM, but I’ll skip that memory for now.