So here we are, at last, in our beloved Austrian mountains. The Italians, the Swiss, and the French all do their skiing a little differently – and that’s great. We’ve got love for all of them. But you can only have one favourite.
As we said earlier, this part of our trip is a COVID-delayed 40th birthday extravaganza for Will, who turned 40 last year during lockdown. So, we took all the plans we’d made, and shifted them forward a year. Then we added some sprinkles and extra candles, to make up for the lost year.
Will has been organising group ski trips for 20-odd years. His parents met skiing and passed the bug onto him from an early age. There are lots of ways people enjoy a ski trip, and whatever that is, it’s just fine. For some people it’s a long, boozy lunch at the top of a glacier. For some it’s all about the nightlife, and for some it’s a chance to enjoy being pampered in a spa and a chalet, without having to cook every single day. For us, it’s about skiing. We are first lift-last lift people. We just can’t sit still indoors while there’s a snowy mountain staring back at us out there. Thankfully, we have a wonderful group of like-minded (or at least tolerant!) friends, and this year we dragged 14 of them with us.
There’s sooo much to tell you about, so the abridged version is: Lisa and I are currently recovering in a fancy hotel, after a week of burning the candle every which way with these guys. A week in which there was literally not a spare minute to think about posting anything. There was just way too much fun to be had.
The slightly longer version:
This annual event, known as Pankiski, after its organiser, got an overhaul this year. A new name – Pankigeburtstagski, and a new organiser – Lisa.
Pankigeburtstagski followed the same general themes of Pankiski; a dress up day; democratic election of daily ski leader (whose job it is to plot a route, decide on a lunch stop and après location, and lead the team around the mountain, as well as organise challenges throughout the day, and sum up the day at dinner, asking for nominations for the most stupid thing a team member did); and a democratic election of idiot of the day. The idiot has the honour of wearing the cowbell the next day (which comes in rather useful if there’s a whiteout).
Given that it was Will’s belated 40th, Lisa decided to go for a surprise dress-up theme where Will could easily be differentiated from the rest of the ski team. A couple of different ideas were bounced around – a herd of cows and Will dressed as a busty milkmaid, or a flock of white swans with Will as the black swan, but in the end, I went for 101 Dalmatians with Will as Cruella de Vil. Needless to say, he pulled off the outfit without complaint and even got chatted up by a snowboarder. The puppies soon realised that puppy outfits are incredibly well insulated and so we were all hotter than the sun for most of the day….
On Dalmatian day, Lisa, Emily and Rosie organised a day in Leogang with a murder mystery game to start the morning off, lunch in the sun at the AsitzBrau (with a round of chop-up-the-chocolate-with-a-knife-and-fork whilst wearing Cruella’s gloves and wig until someone rolls a 6 on the dice) and a Will-themed quiz expertly delivered by Bobo Fett (aka Dan Webb).
Other highlights of the week included hotel karaoke organised by Tom Cibu, lunch meet-ups with James, Annabel and the 3-month old Hal (who did his bit on dress up day too (Halmatian!), apres-ski at the Goaßstall and the Schwarzacher where Karen ‘K-Shiz’ Womack did a phenomenal job of procuring tables for 16 people on multiple occasions, sauna, post-sauna snow angels, drunk night-skiing, impromptu apple-pie shots, hands-free dessert, snowman-building, an evening of Mafia co-ordinated by Ben, a fleeting birthday visit by Tom ‘McQuestionable’ McNeil, and laughing until we cried (more often than not instigated by either Jim McJim or Emily ‘E-bomb’ Davies). Another highlight was the round Saalbach challenge which consists of 65 kilometres of skiing, 32 lifts, and 12,400 meters of elevation, expertly navigated by Pablo ‘OCD’ Gutierrez. This trip was a first Pankiski for Rosie Cole, James Shires and Annabel Spearman – we hope this trip didn’t put you off!!
The come down after the team left was awful. How are Will and Lisa supposed to ever laugh that much again? Our livers however have been rejoicing ever since and Lisa is back on early morning treadmill sessions.