Bucegi Natural Park, Romania, August 13th, 2015
The slopes are officially closed, and my friends are already telling me about their summer plans. I accept that summer is coming. But while they're preparing their gear for the warmer months, I'm getting mine ready for a little more snowboarding. Board, helmet, gloves, a spare pair, and water. And two things that, from now on, become essential: a backpack and a shovel. It's early April. Over the following months, my friends at the cable car would keep seeing me heading up with my snowboard, sometimes together with Adriano, until almost the end of July.
Getting there is simple: the cable car from Bușteni to Babele. From there, everything happens on foot. The walk to the kicker. The climbs. The way back. There's still plenty of snow at first, so for the first kicker I choose a valley near Cabana Caraiman. The morning is clear. I descend for about ten minutes, find the spot, and start building. Excited. Maybe a little too excited. I dig, move snow, and work on the landing until I realize there's one small problem: I've chosen a spot much too far away. If I finish everything I have in mind, there won't be enough time left to actually ride it. The walk back takes almost an hour. Every step means pulling my leg out of wet snow that swallows me up to my waist. Over the next few days, I learn to move differently. Lightly. Carefully. Almost like a cat. Once, I even manage to convince Adriano to come with me. After that experience, I don't see him again until I change the spot. :))
Enough with the excessive enthusiasm. The next location is exactly five minutes from the station. Much better. I build a line with two kickers and enough possibilities to approach each run a little differently. Of all the spots, this one lasts the longest. I can even invite friends without hearing them ask how much farther we have to walk. But day by day, the kickers get smaller. The snow retreats. Until one day, grass suddenly appears through the second kicker. The message is pretty clear. It's time to move again.
As the snow disappears, some of the possibilities disappear with it. The number of tricks becomes limited. But I'm beginning to understand that I don't need to force every day just to get as much as possible out of it. Too much enthusiasm comes at a price. You can spend so much energy building a kicker that, when it's finally time to ride, you have nothing left. Or you can keep trying bigger tricks on an increasingly smaller landing until, sooner or later, something stops working. Neither option interests me much. So I choose something else. Fewer tricks. More control. More flow. I focus on style. The snow can disappear. The snowboarding doesn't have to disappear with it.
