At The Foot of The Mountain

Gulmarg, Kashmir - Week 1

Gulmarg is Indias premiere snow sports resort. It has a 2 phase gondola section that gives a vertical rise of 3950metres. There are one or two drag lifts, but these are off limits to snowboarders… and they only service relatively flat areas anyhow. Once at the top of the Gondola, you can either ride one area of ‘patrolled’ terrain, or, if you’re experienced enough, you can go into some serious back country. It is for this reason you must have an avalanche shovel, a probe and a transceiver on you at all times.

The top phase of the Gondola is very subjectively open, and so on days when it is closed, there are many runs you can slash up under the tree line. The quirk here is though, you need a car to drive you back to the top.

Day one of our massively anticipated riding finally dawned. After breakfast, which was my first non-curry meal of the trip we congregated outside the hotel awaiting our guides arrival. The snow had stopped falling, and the sky was blue – it was almost too perfect to be starting this adventure in such beautiful fashion. Local dogs came to see what was happening, snow monkeys carried on with their business in the trees nearby and purple tinged crows flew over head as we tested avalanche beacon equipment. I’d sunk into the deep snow several times just heading over to where we would clip in, and as I knelt down to fasten my new board to my feet for the first time, I finally felt ‘on holiday’ – with all the long, lengthy, tiring traveling behind me.

I watched as a couple of others dropped off the snowy ledge and with the excitement now too much to bear, I too dropped in. My new Burton Fish surprising me with how easy it was to maneuver. A first look at the first phase of the gondola was something else to behold – bearing in mind, we still couldn’t see where it would finally end up – some 4000metres above sea level, for cloud cover still surrounded the upper peaks. The lift ticket system has been something that I think makes or breaks a good resort in Europe, America and Oceania – and I would quickly get annoyed if I had to dig out a pass each time I rode a lift; rather than an electronic pass system… Gulmarg has it’s own charm however. An Indian man sits in the corner near the pickup zone and sells each ride to you individually. In return you receive a voucher for your ride; the sponsors slogan mis-spelt “Stronger than the Stogest”. I decided this could get old quickly but didn’t realize how few times I would need to do this throughout the trip. To compare Gulmarg to anywhere else I’d ever been would be totally unfair however. This trip is the perfect fusion of my two favourite pastimes; traveling to remote locations, and sliding down snowy hills on carbon fibre core planks of wood.

At mid station, the relatively clear sky allowed our first looks of the mountain Affarwat, that just has to be seen to appreciate it’s full wonder. The peak still shrouded in cloud, and a queue solidly formed to get to the final phase of the lift, we rode the lower section several times. Fresh powder made the trips first few runs very enjoyable indeed, and each new run heralded a “better than the last run” feeling.

After a couple of these runs, we finally managed to jump on the gondola to the top station. The winds were blowing hard and the safety officer at the top informed us this would be the last run of the day; so to enjoy ourselves. And that we did. Although the light was as flat as a pancake, it was still easy to find untracked fields of fresh, and hit them at speed too. Before long, we had descended nearly back to mid-station, when I think I broke my personal record for fastest snowboard land speed along a cat-track.

As the snow fell, none of us realized that it would not be until the following Sunday that the top of the mountain would be accessible again.

The hotel continued to host us in charming Kashmiri style, the food was tasty, and dinners became romantic for the fact candles were oft used as the power failed several times per evening.

The storm which had shut down the upper gondola phase, raged on for several more days. I have never seen so much snow fall in such a short space of time, and so it was that every morning for most of the week, there would be plenty of fresh, and a constant snowfall. Since we were forced to stay low, we made the most of our guide Fayez, who showed us some awesome lines through the trees and along some steep challenging terrain that eventually delivered you at Tangmarg; a town based at the foot of the hill up to Gulmarg.

I attended an avalanche safety meeting on Tuesday evening which went some way to educating me of the dangers of back country snowboarding, and also gave a prediction of when the upper mountain would once again open – Friday lunch time at best, and this would be after several controlled detonations of explosives to shift some suspect avalanche hot spots.

The snowfall thinned toward the end of the week, and we lapped up the last of the untracked areas of fresh powder as the weekend landed. But still, by Saturday, we had only made one descent from the top station, way back on day 1… we were getting hungry and restless for all that fresh neige to be made available to us.