Shwiff...

Although on the surface snowboarding is a social sport, outside of travelling, waiting in tow queues and the blue oyster T-bar**, you are pretty much solitarily skitting down a hill with just your own thoughts for company.

Today, the fantastic conditions at Aviemore made the feeling even more pronounced as the fresh dump of powdery snow just swallows sound leaving you with nothing but a shwiff, shwiff whilst you float across the snow field and speeds which always feel like they should generate more noise than they actually do.

An amazing experience I'd recommend to anyone.

If you like to see one of our runs, I took a wee video of it which you can see here...


** A T-bar is a type of ski tow designed to take 2 skiers up a mountain. The skiers sit on either side of the T shaped bar to be dragged up the hill. Snowboarders however have to put the T between their legs and whenst it is busy, makes sense to go 2 at a time. When 2 men of opposing stance (1 left foot forward, 1 right foot forward) go up a T-bar tow, the sideways motion going up the hill can be likened to the dancing at the Blue Oyster bar in the 80's classic film, Police Academy. Adopting the tango stance whilst singing the tune and grabbing your partner's rear, optional!

Notes on the Picture
The picture features none other than WorkSpend Jeepo who kindly drove up today and gave me a loan of his NHS work jacket because I managed to forget mine. He's giving me an orchestrated snow swish here as opposed to the 2 or 3 unscheduled ones that he also tried to use to cover me in snow.