Winter Wonderland

With all sorts of warm weather here, (by warm I mean 50’s, but still) It’s easy to forget sometimes that we are still in the middle of a pretty harsh winter. By harsh I mean the U.S is getting pounded, and Europe isn’t doing so well either. Rome saw its first snow for the first time in 25 years a couple weeks ago, and generally there’s been lots of precipitation.
Only 10 hours after arriving back in Rome after our 5 day trip to Northern Italy, I found myself once again leaving the city for a more scenic countryside. It was decided yesterday(Saturday) that a few of us would like to go skiing today (Sunday). The trip had been planned out/attempted before(without me, I was in florence)but fell apart when people didn’t exactly wake up in time to make the necessary transportation. Regardless, those who had planned to go originally were ready to make another attempt at it, so we set our alarms for 6 am and got ready for what would turn out to be a very interesting day.

I never planned on going skiing over here. I skied once before I left for Italy to “get it out of my system”, but anyone who skis knows that’s not possible. Having said that, I was by no means prepared with my limited luggage for winter weather. Enter, my crazy get-up of an outfit.

The Outfit:

Take a minute to picture this. Jeans under sweatpants, 2 pairs of thick(er) dress socks, A long sleeve shirt, a thin hoodie, a northface fleece, and a peacoat, a scarf, a beanie, sunglasses, and thin 99cent wool gloves under leather gloves. Yes, ladies and gentleman, this is what I skied in. I didn’t walk out the door in that outfit, I brought a backpack with half of it packed away so I looked normal during transportation, but I can only imagine how ridiculous I looked on the mountain. Actually, there are pictures of how ridiculous I looked, so I’ll try and get my hands on those and post one here so you can all stop laughing out loud to the thought of what I must have looked like, and instead laugh even harder at the actual sight of what I looked like. I have to tell you though, when I was on the mountain, I didn’t realize I wasn’t dressed properly. It was 56 in Rome today, and still pretty warm at the mountain except for the tippy top, more on that later. But I was actually warm/sweating the entire trip. Who says you need a big expensive snow suit to go skiing? Well the sweatpants were pretty wet by the end of the day, but so be it, they have to just dry out.

The Ride:

So anyway, how did we get there you might ask? Well, we took a bus, to a subway, to a bus, to another bus. Yes, lots of changing transportation. This mountain was recommended to us by Carlotta, our Italian tutor, who said it was the closest to Rome, and it probably is, but when you take all those different modes of transportation, nothing is short. 3 hours was our total travel time, one way. Any normal person could have driven there, which would have taken about an hour or so, maybe less the way Italians drive (which is the complete opposite of their walking) but we made it there and the traveling really wasn’t that bad.

The Goods:

So we were there, dressed to the 9’s, without any equipment. Off to the rental shop. Oh how I miss my own skis. I really can’t complain, it was extremely cheap to rent, less than half of what it would be in the US. I think the guy sizing me up for skis looked at Nate by accident instead of myself when he was picking out the skis (Nate is 6’2”, I am 5’6.) and he gave me massive skis. I didn’t realize how massive they were until we got to the lift, and I wasn’t about to walk back (It wasn’t that far, I could have easily done it) to get shorter ones. 172 cm skis, which are as tall as/taller than me. That’s not how skis work, their supposed to be around your chin or so. So yes, massive skis, the boots fit ( I told him what side I needed), but I was skiing so I didn’t really care. They were pretty tricky to control sometimes, that and that I am used to my own equipment forced me to think a bit more while thinking, but not a big deal. On the upside, the longer skis allowed for much more speed.

The Mountain:



So I’m dressed, I’ve got my skis, and were at the mountain. So how was the mountain? Well we were told by our Italian tutor that it is one of the smaller mountains in Italy, but since it is close it would work well. Now a bit of a disclaimer. I have only skied the Poconos. I have skied a lot over the past few years, but I’ve never made it past PA. I don’t know what skiing in Vermont, Colorado, Canada, etc is like at all, so all of my comments and comparisons are made to the Poconos, like Blue Mountain, Shawnee, even Mountain Creek in New Jersey. That said:

THIS WAS NOT A TINY MOUNTAIN! If tiny means multiple peaks, long trails, backcountry and some completely untouched areas, then I must be skiing down glorified hills in PA (actually, that’s probably true). I didn’t realize the enormity of it until I was halfway up the lift. The view was incredible. We could look down to the right and see an entire town/small city, really spectacular. To our left was the highest peak, which looked like a mountain people get dropped from helicopters to ski down. It was an incredible view, until we were so high up we were literally in the clouds. Yes, we were at the second highest peak and were in a cloud. I didn’t know what to think. Should I be scared I was skiing in a fog in a cloud? No, I was more amazed, and open to taking the experience in. From there there was only one way to go: down.
Now from my experience, you get to the top of the lift, and then you pick a trail down the mountain based on difficulty (green circles, blue squares, black diamond, that kind of thing). Their all clearly mapped out, and pretty distinctly outlined by trees and fences. This was not the case. There were no signs for more difficult or less difficult. There were no distinct trails even. It was just open mountain. Go to the edge, look at which way you think is your difficulty, ski down, reach the bottom near a lift, repeat. Towards the bottom they funneled into “trails” which were more like wide open spaces between patches of trees that led strategically to the lifts. If you wanted to ski the whole width of the mountain though while going down, you could do that, nobody or anything was there to stop you. It was pretty incredible.



The Snow:

I realized quickly that there were no snowmakers on this mountain. At all. Yet the entire mountain was completely covered with snow. I mean covered, every inch, and really deep, awesome snow. The entire time we saw (or for that matter heard) ice. If you ski you know the sound, that terrible scraping sound as you try and carve of ski meeting ice. The mountain was silent, it was perfectly packed snow with just enough fresh powder on top. Sometimes too much fresh powder for me using such long/heavy skis, but I’d rather that than ice any day.

The Skiing:

Was the best skiing I’ve ever experienced. I was completely mis-dressed. The ride there was long. I was using skis that were way too long, boots and poles that I’m not familiar with, on a mountain I’ve never skied before, yet it was the best day of skiing. To ski natural snow, on such an awesome mountain was such a treat. I know now I’ll have to make a trip to Vermont or somewhere with some comparable skiing in the U.S.

Here are some videos complete with commentary, taken on my phone. The pictures are from my phone too, so don’t judge the quality.






Oh and of course, in case you were wondering, the mountain was called Terminillo, and it was in Lazio still (the Region Rome is in).