Winter's Rolling In
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STORIES
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DAVID DELIV GEORGIA
Daniel Stiller Cohn and Victor Salén of Elevenate kick off the winter season with fifty skiers on the glacier, together with ski magazine Åka Skidor.
At Arlanda airport on a Thursday afternoon in November, it’s easy to tell who’s heading to the Alps and who’s off to a meeting. “We just looked for gear and ski bags,” says Daniel. “You could pick them out straight away.”
The trip was the ski test weekend with the ski magazine Åka Skidor in Austria's Sölden: three days, and a test center full of gears and skis to try.
From Zürich it is three and a half hours by bus. "It felt like knowing that tomorrow is Christmas Eve and the presents are already under the tree," says Daniel.
It did. "We opened the curtains and the sun was just touching the peaks," says Daniel. "That's when it lands: now the season has officially started." It was the sixth of November, the earliest either of them had stood on snow.
The snow was not in the village. Sölden lies at 1,368 meters and was green. The skiing starts above 2,600, at the top of a glacier road that climbs thirteen kilometers of bends. "The driver told us that alone he drives it in twelve minutes, and with us he'd take fifteen," says Victor. "People were holding on." Then the glacier opened in front of the bus, "like reaching the centrefold of a book," says Daniel.
"The first day on snow is the same every year," he says. "Will my muscles remember what to do? You're careful and fired up at the same time." The first run was steep and narrow, then opened into a wide field in full sun. The muscles remembered.
It was around freezing on the snow and far warmer in the sun: sunscreen weather, in November. By lunch a midlayer had come off. "The usual mistake is to start too warm," says Daniel. "You sweat, you take something off, and then you get cold. Better to start a little cold and ride yourself warm."
In the afternoon, the group gathered for a session on Elevenate. Victor introduced the brand and its roots in Åre, while Daniel covered layering, membranes and garment care.
The discussion focused on washing and maintaining shell garments. Daniel stressed that proper care is essential to making technical clothing last, comparing it to looking after a watch or a car.
The key takeaway was simple: brands need to do a better job of teaching skiers how to care for the gear they invest in.
The short version is in Elevenate's care guide. And Daniel has one question for everyone who was there: have you washed your skiwear since you came home?
Saturday came in grey, and fog settled on the glacier. "In sunshine the Alps are grand," says Victor. "As soon as the weather turns they are almost frightening. The mountains look mean. At home in Åre everything is soft, and you can see a long way." The word they both reached for was Mordor.
They had also found a steeper field, with rocks showing and two crevasses to stay clear of. "This early in the winter you have to be very careful," says Daniel, "and not let the excitement decide." They watched others ski it first, then went.
Sunday was clear again. There was snow nobody had touched since the fog. A T-bar took them most of the way up; the last stretch they walked, board and skis in hand, to a summit where two Austrian ski tourers sat with coffee and a cigarette each.
The way down was a face beside the piste where the race clubs ran gates. Nobody could say whether the snow was deep enough. Daniel went first, "as some kind of guinea pig", and it was. Victor followed. "We laid down perfect figure-eights," says Daniel. "Then we rode out into the sun with our arms out, like Lucky Luke riding into the sunset."
Lunch, one more hour, and then fifty tired and happy skiers changing in a car park beside a bus.
"You never know when you'll next stand on snow," says Daniel. "Except this time we do. It's coming this week."
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