For the last 5 years in a row, I’ve bought myself an Ikon pass, which allows me to go skiing at donzens of destinations in America for a price cheaper than many season passes for a single resort (s/o the college discount). It also has a few locations globally, including 5 in Europe. I always thought this was cool but never expected to be able to see them, at least not anytime soon. But having gotten the chance to study abroad, and extra time between the end of the program and the beginning of winter quarter, I knew I had to stay in Europe and try these places out. So over the last 2 weeks I have travelled by myself through the Alps to 3 different ski resorts on the pass.

The first resort on my list was in Kitzbühel, Austria. When I arrived it was dumping snow, which persisted all throughout the next day which was my first day of skiing. The snow was so insanely good, it was the most fresh snow I’ve had in years and it was only December 2nd! I was so deep in powder that all my gear got soaking wet, which then led to it freezing. Also it was super hard to see in the storm and I was by myself at a foreign resort, so I got lost often. But none of it mattered, I was havinga blast. The days after that were amazing as well, the skies were blue and sunny and there was still a ton of powder left over. Everything about my time in here was perfect. There were almost no crowds, an insane amount of snow, and I somehow had a 4 person shared room all to myself at my hostel, which was a walk away from the mountain. It couldn’t have gone better, thank you for spoiling me Kitzbühel.

Next up on the trip, the iconic Matterhorn in Zermatt, Switzerland. It took me 5 trains over 11 hours to get there, but I got there none the less. Unfortunately all my good karma was used up in Kitzbühel, because things didn’t go nearly as well here. I shared an attic room with 7 other hostel guests, and the beds were all lined up and touching each other. It was cloudy and windy pretty much the whole time I was there, and not much of the resort was open. I still had some fun skiing, but it was nothing on what I had just gotten in Austria. Though the visibility was awful for most of the time there were two moments during my time here, each for an hour or two, where things cleared up and I could see The Matterhorn in all it’s glory. Towering over the resort, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it while I was skiing. I wish I was able to see it more, but you take what you can get and the periods where I could see it were unreal. Not the best skiing, but a beautiful area.

Lastly, I headed to Chamonix in France to ski at the Mont-Blanc resort. When I first arrived, there was only 1 or 2 chairlifts open. Without much open, as well as having skied so much over the past 10 days and the fact that it was raining, I took a couple days off. Eventually there was a beautiful bluebird day, so I headed out to the resort. This one reminded me a lot of the resorts I ski at back home, whereas the other two were very foreign frnom what I was used to. On one of my first runs, I find this excellet area of powder and rip it up. The resort had a bit of a crowd this day, but there was nobody skiing this patch, which concerned me. But the snow was so good I didn’t listen to my worries. At the end of this amazing run, I quickly found out that nobody was here because it was a closed area, and had no lift access from the bottom. So, I had to pop out, put my skis on my shoulder, and hike uphill through the snow for an hour and a half until I got back in bounds. At the end of this day, I stayed on the mountain late to watch the sunet. This turned out to be so incredibly worth it, despite how cold it got as the sun se. The pink & orange hues were reflecting and glowing off the white sides of the mountain, and it was one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen.