147146 WINTER | 2012

somewhere in

I’m going to start this story off with a quote from Leonardo DiCaprio in The

Beach, circa 2000. You remember that one, right? There’s that secret tropi-

cal paradise in Thailand that young Leo hears about from an old drunk guy. He

eventually finds the place, but shit goes down when a bunch of other people show up because he told them about the place

during his voyage there? Anyways, this is what Leo says: “This island may not

actually exist. And even if it does, I don’t know if we can get there or not. There

are only a few people who know exactly where it is, and they keep it absolutely

secret. I just feel like everyone tries to do something different, but you always wind

up doing the same damn thing.”

with Dom Vallee, Shayne Zwickel, miikka haSt anD JonaS hagStröm by Eric GrEEnE, photos by GEoff Andruik

italyShayne enjoying something other than a box of cooking wine.

Best birthday ever.

149148 WINTER | 2012

O ur story is similar to that of The Beach, minus the tropical setting and savage murder. I’ll take you

back to the very start to clarify where we step in. A young pro snowboarder from Ita-ly is riding halfpipe contests on the World Cup tour. After months on the road in for-eign territories, he eventually befriends a Finnish guy. The Italian tells the Fin about a secret powder paradise hidden in a quiet corner of his homeland that nobody knows about. On the average day, there will be five to 10 people riding this ski resort with steep trees and waist-deep fluff. It sounds too good to be true, but stranger places do exist in this world. One night, the two friends are out having drinks during a contest trip in Chile, and after one too many drinks, the Italian lets the name of the place casually slip out. The Fin scars it into his memory bank for a later day. Fast-forward a few years to a time when the Fin has left the contest tour and ma-tured into a powder-hunting backcountry hustler. He meets a new friend from Swe-den who is like-minded in his quest for powder, and the two of them set out to find this Italian paradise that may or may not be real. Well, they find it. And it is steeper and deeper than anywhere they have ever been, and there’s nobody there. The two Scandinavian friends stay there for weeks upon weeks and the snow doesn’t stop. They leave in the spring and set off to occupy their time somehow until it snows again in the fall and they can return. This is what happens next. The Finnish guy ends up in Indonesia, surfing away the dreary fall weather at home, and he bumps into a Canadian girl who he knows from the halfpipe contest scene of his former life. They end up making out, and as their relationship develops romanti-cally, he mentions the powder paradise to her one morning—pillow talk, I believe it’s known as. The Canadian girl shows a very keen interest in accompanying him when he returns to Italy, and as the Fin is lost in passion, he consents to her request. A couple of months later when is it decided to return to the powder of unknown Italy, the Canadian girl men-tions that she still plans to join the Scandinavians in their quest, but she will also bring two friends and a camera-man with her from home. Perhaps this sounds a bit intrusive considering the secretive nature of this destination, but alas, she is a woman, and he is a man left with no choice but to succumb. So here we are. The Finnish man is Miikka Hast, and his Swedish friend is Jonas Hagström. The Canadian girl is Dom Vallee, and her friends are myself and Shayne Zwickel, with Geoff An-druik as the cameraman. As a result of this chain reaction of untold secrets, we are all here in the illusive pow-der paradise, somewhere in Italy.

“How did you hear of this place?” the man asks politely. We’ve just arrived at the lone pizzeria in the quiet vil-lage and are checking into a small dormitory room that they rent by the night. The man is having dinner alone, as there are no other customers in the restaurant. He is smiling, but his eyes are stern—worried almost. Large snowflakes hammer down outside in the dark, and had we been an hour behind schedule, I doubt we would’ve made it through the mountain pass. “I’m sorry, but the person who told me of this place made me promise to not repeat their name,” I answer. “Nor am I to mention the name of this place to anyone else.” His smile widens and his eyes soften as he reaches for another slice of pizza. “Good,” he says. His nicotine-stained teeth shine in his mouth through a mass of half-chewed pizza, and he laughs in hysterics. “Welcome, my friends!” he adds. “And do not say your friend’s name who told you of this place or we will kill him.” His laughter continues as he turns back to his meal and we drag our luggage off to our room.

‘Welcome, my friends!’ he adds. ‘And do not say your friend’s name who told you of this place or we will kill him.’ His laughter continues as he turns back to his meal and we drag our luggage off to our room.One playground in plain view of another.

Greener hits the adult version.

Eric launches into neck deep dust.

What’ll you have sir? Eric manning the taps.

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J onas and Miikka both claim this town is haunted. They’ve spent about a dozen weeks

here in total and say they haven’t slept a single night. They just roll around in the bunk beds and check the clock every few minutes until daylight creeps through the cur-tains. We gather around a table in the empty restaurant for breakfast the following morning, and it has snowed more than a metre over-night. I slept like a drunk infant after the long journey from Canada, so I immediately dismiss their sug-gestion of any nighttime curse. We’re skeptical if the mountain will even open, but when we walk over to the lone chairlift and the proprietor sees us, he starts warm-ing up the gears. We hand him a few euros in cash, and he tests all of our avalanche beacons before send-ing us up. There are high elevation Alps at the top of the ski resort, but it is still dumping buckets so we’re forced to remain lower in the trees. The entire fall line of the mountain is quite steep, so even though there is no hope of keeping our boards above the surface, we’re still able to ride through the snow as it barrels off our chests. Face masks are absolutely essential in the powder paradise. By the afternoon there are about 12 people in total on the mountain. We’re a group of six. We bump into one of the other guests at the bottom of the chairlift and discover that it’s none other than Filippo Kratter, Italian pro

snowboarder and national celebrity. He’s shocked to see us and immediate-ly offers up the already familiar, “How did you find out about this place?” Dom replies with as vague an answer as possible, explaining the sworn secrecies, and it seems that Filippo and his friend accept our presence. After one day, we’ve been in town long enough to realize there are four business-es: the pizzeria/hotel, a café, a market and the ski hill. We’re basically the only guests utilizing said businesses, and I have a rough idea of what electricity, food and alcohol cost, so I can easily put two and two together to know that these busi-nesses aren’t even breaking even from our investment. On top of this, the locals all seem to drive expensive new cars and talk on their iPhones all day. Some-thing smells like fish in this place, but given the fragility of our presence and knowledge of the area in the first place, I’m not about to raise any questions. We quickly sink into the only routine that seems possible in these mountains. We wake up and have a long breakfast that consists of eating bread, drinking coffee, and talking about powder. After that, we gear up and walk over to the chairlift where we ride powder all day until our legs give out. Next, we have a bit of downtime to dry out our gear, stretch, read, or whatever. Dinner takes between two and three hours, as we each try our best to conquer an entire pizza, balancing the food consumption with a bottomless cask of wine. Dinner is fol-lowed by coffee and grappa before we retire to our rooms to sleep. It’s a simple

routine but entirely fulfilling. Italians have it all figured out in my opinion. In our communal room, Shayne takes over the bunk that’s stuffed into a narrow hallway that leads nowhere. It quickly becomes a nest of dirty laundry, pizza boxes, avalanche gear, and empty bottles. I catch him sitting in there one night with a questionable-looking box of wine.“Did you buy a box of cook-ing wine?” I inquire. “Yeah,” he answers. “It was one euro.” “But you could have bought a decent bottle of wine for two euros,” I argue. “I know, but this box was half the price,” he states calmly. I turn away in defeat.

“On the average day, there will be five to 10 people riding this ski resort with steep trees and waist-deep fluff. It sounds too good to be true, but stranger places do exist in this world.”

Packing 101.

Midway through the sketchy lap, Mikka sends it in the sun.

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T he sun finally comes out, so we make sure we’re at the chair-lift waiting as soon as it starts

turning. We build a couple of step-down jumps and narrow gaps through the trees to get busy. I find some stumps to launch off, and we all agree that it feels pretty damn good to jump off of anything when you’re landing in neck-deep dust. We head down to the village in the afternoon because Shayne had mentioned an urban feature he noticed the night before when he was wandering around aimlessly by himself. The feature ends up being pretty cool. It’s an ancient hotel wall that could easily have a jump built off the nearby street corner to launch onto it. We get it set up quickly and don’t see a person in the streets the entire time we’re there. But just as we’re about to start sending, a young and attractive female police officer shows up to kill the party. She is extreme-ly nice but mentions that she’s under strict orders from the mayor to send us home if we don’t purchase a permit that allows us to shoot photos and shovel

snow onto the street. My confusion is that the streets are already covered in snow and we merely kicked a bit of it around to smooth out the surface. Our arguments prove futile, and in order for Shayne to jump the wall, Dom and I have to walk over to the mayor’s office to purchase the “permit.” When we arrive, we are informed that the “permit” is 100 Euros, payable in cash only. I take it as another clue about the sneaky money that seems to circulate around this town as I buck up. The next day is March 5. I know this because March 5 is my birthday and it’s a day I recognize every year. I’ve never been a big birthday person, but I always enjoy a small gathering and a few cocktails in good company. This year, however, I awake with a sense of melan-choly and, although we’re in exotic Italy and should not be complaining about anything, I know that finding a party of any form in this village will be hopeless. But the sun is out and the snow is deep, so off we go to celebrate in the best way I know how. After a few runs, we stop on an

open ridge giving way to a picturesque view of the underlying valley, and all of a sudden the others start unloading picnic items from their backpacks. When riding in the Alps, backpacks should commonly be used for avalanche and safety gear, but I’m touched by their efforts, so I keep this thought to myself as they spread out an array of wine, pizza, cheese and baguettes. Shayne handymans up a fire and Dom reveals a corkscrew from her pants pocket, speakers are connected to an iPod, and we begin to feast and laugh and drink and cheers with each other. Maybe I’ll claim it as my best birthday ever because I can’t think of a better one. Later that night we feast again on pizza and turn the pizzeria into a discoteca with everyone we can find in town. There’s a decent turnout, but the large restaurant could probably accommodate about 600 more guests. In the morn-ing I can’t remember when I went to sleep, but I know that Andruik closed his night down around 4 a.m. We drag our asses back up the mountain about two hours behind Miikka, Jonas and Shayne, who have begun a long hike around the highest peak to score one of those once-in-a-lifetime-Warren-Miller-film runs. Andruik sets up his long, National Geographic lens from across the valley, and we witness the boys get some glory turns that are just not possible to find in Canada. After the big mountain show, Dom steps to some aggressive straight lines and pillows in the trees before Shayne closes the day down with an old-school tuck-knee Indy off a large cliff. With days upon days of sun, we continue to venture further and further across the peaks. After a lengthy morn-ing traverse, Miikka and Jonas suggest we ride down a ridge that aims directly away from the village because they’re “pretty sure” it will take us to a nearby town a ways down the road that we can easily hitchhike home from. These boys have already proven themselves to me tenfold, so I’m the first one to drop into the precarious wilderness. Not far down we run into an abandoned village that is in ruins and buried in snow. There are at least 20 buildings including a grand scenic church. It normally would have seemed a very creepy setting, but the sun brightens up the sketch factor of the rows of deserted homes. Miikka builds a jump between two crumbled buildings and greases a handful of tricks off it. It’s near dark when we continue down the valley, and before we realize it, we’ve run out of snow and are jumping over water holes and crevices in the bottom of a dark over-hanging ravine. It’s night when we finally connect with the road, and although it’s close to the dumbest, most dangerous run I’ve ever taken in my life, I’m still appreciative of the Scandinavians who just can’t seem to let the adventure stop.

...We all agree that it feels pret-ty damn good to jump off of anything when you’re landing in neck-deep dust.

Now you don’t. Zwickel gets white-roomed.Now you see him.

The lady that secured the destination. Ms. Vallée enjoying the private mountain.

WINTER | 2012

155154 WINTER | 2012

I ’ll interject with a brief note here to declare that this type of routine continues on for some days, so I’m

not really sure as to what happened of significance and in what order. We did the same stuff for what felt like a very long time: rode a lot of powder, ate a lot of pizza, blah, blah, blah… I’ll spare you. The next interesting thing we discover is the river that runs paral-lel to the village. Actually, the river is nothing special, but on the far side of this river lies a collection of steep fluted spines that run down to the flow-ing water. They’re so blatantly obvi-ous that you don’t even notice they’re there. I walk over a bridge and up to the top of the ridgeline, and after I look over the edge, I turn and sprint back down to grab my board. But the light sucks, so Andruik begs us to wait.

The following morning we go back to the river at sunrise, and Shayne and I track out the entire face in less than half an hour. The slope is steep, fast and ba-sically inside the town. The final line I ride would run straight into a children’s playground had it not been for the river at the bottom. After the rapid descents, we unstrap and take 10 steps across the street for a morning coffee at the café. During our stay we’ve become so ca-sual with those who work at the pizzeria and the café that they encourage us to act as if we’re at home. At the pizzeria we’re allowed to prepare our own pizzas and even step behind the bar to pour a drink if we feel like it. At the café they insist on hosting a dinner for our entire group on our last night in town. We burn through about eight courses, and Jonas pulls out his guitar after the meal

to belt out some Paul Simon and Neil Young covers to everyone in attendance. It’s some good, small town Italian fun. So, there you have it. We depart the next day and make our separate ways to different airports and train stations, heading off to wherever we’re aiming for next. As I sit in Rome by myself, I wonder why it felt like I was riding powder for so long that nothing else existed in life, yet now it feels like it all occurred so fast that I can barely appreciate it. I guess I’ll just have to go back next year when it snows again. We all swore to keep a pact to never mention the name of the powder para-dise, and I will stay true to that. But may-be I’ll sketch a map someday and hide it somewhere clever. After all, what’s the fun in keeping a secret if there isn’t a bit of danger of letting it slip out?

We’re basically the only guests utilizing said

businesses, and I have a rough idea of what electricity, food and

alcohol cost, so I can easily put two and two together to know that

these businesses aren’t even breaking even

from our investment.

This wallride was paid for. Literally. Zwickel sessions a $100 wall.

Dom takes a moment to reflect on the chain of

events that led her here.

If you can spot an address or landmark in this shot you could be one of only a few to know the name of this town—Dom Vallée being one of them.