Ryan and I were by far the keenest to get up on the mountain and hit the slopes. I was on my new xmas board, while Ryan was telemarking - both happy enough to go anywhere on or off piest.

Cervina is as big as Mammoth Mountain, if not bigger - although it is for beginner -> intermediate skiers at best. So we (ryan and I) were struggling to find much of a challenge. The mountain is that large, by going up the gondolas we were raising near 2km in height - causing our ears to pop on the way up. The longest single run was 11km long which is a pretty serious run � a good way to practice turns and work on technique.

While we were there, it pretty much constantly snowed, given a good few inches of new snow each day and almost a foot on one particular day. But with all this snow, brought low cloud and poor visibility making some skiing pretty touch and almost dangerous. On the day after getting a good foot of snow, people were obviously going too hard on the mountain without being able to see what they were doing. We saw at least 2 people get helicoptered off the mountain and many more skied off in the emergency sled.

One of the good or maybe bad things of these fields is the fact there are bars at all different points up the mountain. So each night we would rendezvous as a group at one of the bars for a couple before going back to the hotels for a shower and dinner. Naturally one or two turns into three or four before having to ski off the mountain. This caused just a tad amount of chaos, although still a good source for a laugh.

On one exceptionally bad visibility days, Ryan and I made small kicker to play with instead of going up the mountian. Which was fun and a laugh, problem was as above at the end of the day we had a few drinks and managed to talk others into giving it a go. So a few new bruises, banged heads and dented egos the group had done some drunken jumps and crawled back to the hotel.