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Marta Andreoli

No friends on powder days!

#SALEWAFACES #PUREMOUNTAINGIRLS

One Polo, three pairs of skis, poles, skiboots and our four pieces of luggage. We were all set for the first Winter Alpine Campus - five days of pure mountain.

The hub of the Alpine Campus

The group’s days spent at the Innerbach Hof were marked by the blowing of the wind. “Was it windy last night?” was the question on everyone’s lips as soon as they woke up. It was the wind that dictated how we scheduled our days adventures, as it played a large part in determining the snow conditions, as well as the temperature. The wind is a tireless worker: when it blows, it moves, it alters, it creates, it accumulates, and it often wreaks destruction.

The alarm clock went off at 6:45 a.m. We were impatient to get out there and tread it with our new-found knowledge of our surroundings! At first, our eyes were focused on the potential avalanche areas, paying attention to what our mountain guides were telling us. Every lesson took each of us back to our school days with our minds absorbed, our ears perked up, and our sheets full of notes. Once the lessons finished, we headed outside, and were quickly surrounded by white nature, in search of the safest route.

Outside, we tried to plot our track without depending on the one that was already there. We had a few tools to use to interpret the playing field and choose the line that we wanted. We opened up the map: shrines, forks and shepherd’s huts were our unmoving points of reference in the midst of the ever-transforming nature landscape. The group stayed behind the mountain guide with hoods raised in order to ward off the incessant snow. As we progressed at the group’s pace, Andy, our guide, amused himself dotting the thickness of the snow with his pole. The impact of the steel pole broke the blanket, sank in and came back up. A pole thrust into the snow depicts many past and present scenarios. It goes through the soft snow that has just fallen, runs into an older, harder layer marking past snowfalls, before it comes back up, revealing the dreaded degree of the crystals’ cohesion.

Each of us drew our downhill curves as we steered clear of tree branches. The entire wood became awash in the colours of the Alpine Campus’ participants.

Once we had taken our skis off, we had a beer in the warmth of a shepherd’s hut as we light-heartedly chatted about the day, before returning to the Innerbach Hof. The events team cooked dinner, and the group enjoyed a real comradely experience: snow, hot chocolate and cleaning!

Thank you, Salewa!

We got out of Andy’s van - our means of transport over the past few days - at the Speikboden car park, where our Polo awaited us.
We are back in Bolzano, where the majestic and prominent Salewa logo is showcased on the blue windows at the Headquarters. The logo is the same white rubber logo that was stuck on our guide, Andy’s, blue ski mountaineering trousers. He passed a culture onto us that will be with us for the rest of our professional lives as well as in our free time.

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